by James Axler
Hurriedly, J.B. made his way to the old man’s cabin and let himself inside. There were no locks in Heaven Falls, which was either commendable or foolhardy. Just now, J.B. was merely glad that he could come and go as he pleased, at least until someone spotted him and forced him into the endgame.
It was dark inside, strips of moonlight filtering in through the drapeless windows. J.B. stood stock-still in the doorway for a half minute, watching another torch pass along the path where a Melissa patrolled, before pulling the door closed behind him as silently as he was able. He could hear Doc inside, snoring from the bedroom. Once the door was closed, J.B. crept swiftly through the living area of the shack and stopped at the door to the bedroom, which stood wide-open. Doc didn’t awaken; he was lying on his back, snoring loudly, his mouth wide-open.
J.B. smiled when he saw the old man deep in sleep, and he felt a twinge of guilt as he called quietly to wake him. It took a few tries before Doc roused, and he seemed confused for a moment as J.B. stood in his doorway.
“Jolyon, are y—?” Doc said then stopped. “John Barrymore? Is that you there?”
“It’s me, Doc,” J.B. confirmed.
The old man was awake right away, sitting bolt upright as if someone had sent a jolt of electricity through him. “You are a wanted man,” he pronounced. “You must not be here.”
J.B. quieted him with a gesture. “Doc, I need a place to stay. Just for tonight. There are patrols out there, and I’m unarmed. If they catch me now, it’ll end badly.” He didn’t need to add for whom.
“John Barrymore,” Doc said, the concern thick in his voice, “you cannot be here. The Regina has branded you a violator, and I have seen the evidence of what you did to that poor woman—”
“That ‘poor woman’ attacked me,” the Armorer explained, taking a step into the darkened bedroom. “She tried to chill me with her bare hands.”
“That sounds terribly alarmist.” Doc pondered. “I am certain that—”
“Doc, listen to me,” J.B. pleaded. “I just went through all this with Ryan and Krysty. I don’t know what’s come over you, but you have to remember what we are to each other. How we stood firm and protected one another.”
Doc looked at J.B. where the moonlight cast him like a bust in the doorway. “This is an awfully dangerous path you have chosen to tread, John Barrymore,” he said finally. “I am not sure that I can countenance having a violator in the Home.”
“The Home or your home?” J.B. challenged.
“The...” Doc stopped himself, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter. I want you away from here before trouble descends on both of us. I am already having to answer questions about what happened with you yesterday when we went out to tend to the hives. What do you think will happen to me if they find you here?”
“What do you think will happen to me?” J.B. returned sharply. “Doc, I’m calling on you to help me—for everything we’ve been through. I need a place to hide out for the night, that’s all. Once the sun’s up, I figure I can pass through the farms with the workers and get out of here, and I won’t come back.”
“Where will you go?” Doc asked.
“Far away,” J.B. said. “You don’t see it. Ryan doesn’t see it. Millie doesn’t see it. But this place, these people—there’s a wrongness here I can’t explain. They’re gearing up to move into the Deathlands, mebbe take control of it.”
“By the Three Kennedys, you are delusional!” Doc insisted. “The Trai are good people. They have welcomed us into the Home and you have abused that friendship with this...this paranoia!”
“No, I haven’t,” J.B. told him. “You want me to explain it? Well, I can’t. But I can see it—in you, in Ryan, in the others. Everything here feels like a blaster out of balance, and none of you can see it. None of you can see how much you’ve been suckered in.”
“These are the ravings of a madman, of course,” Doc said calmly.
J.B. shook his head in exasperation. “Doc, I’m asking you as a friend to hide me. I’ll be out of your hair right after breakfast, and you won’t see me again. And if someone comes here between now and then, I’ll testify that I broke in and I’m holding you against your will. Please.”
Doc thought for a moment and then a smile appeared on his face, a flash of perfect teeth in the moonlight. “You did break in,” he pointed out.
“I walked in the door,” J.B. said.
“Without being invited,” Doc elaborated.
“Well, if it bothers you, get a bastard lock.”
Doc agreed that J.B. could stay as per the terms he had laid out, and so the Armorer took the bedroom that Jak had vacated a week earlier and stole what sleep he could. It was a restless kind of sleep, and his mind kept racing with nightmare thoughts of the mat-trans and what would happen if the Regina captured him. In his dream, the Melissas swarmed on him and hoisted him high above the towers until the Regina feasted on his flesh before welcoming her people to join in. He awoke with the sunrise, his body covered in sweat.
* * *
BY THE TIME morning came J.B. had a concrete plan. Under Doc’s sufferance he would remain in hiding in his cabin until midmorning. By that time, the Armorer could be reasonably certain that Mildred and Ricky would have departed the cabin he’d shared with them to attend their respective jobs at the medical tower and orchard. With them gone and their shack deserted, J.B. could sneak back in and retrieve his weapons from the lockbox undisturbed, hopefully without running into a Melissa patrol. Once re-armed, J.B. intended to get out of Heaven Falls as fast as he could, utilizing the same mountainous track he had used to get back here. He could remain up there until the cover of night, at which stage movement would become less risky and he could return to the redoubt and hopefully reactivate the mat-trans. The Trai were almost finished with the repairs when he had looked a day and a half before; it was entirely possible they had the unit operational again by now.
One aspect of J.B.’s plan that didn’t sit comfortably with him was leaving Ryan and his other companions behind. They had been a team for a long time—more than that, they had become a family. But he had tried to reason with Ryan, had remonstrated with Doc, and nothing had seemed to change their minds about this mountain society. He had seen how Mildred enthused about the medical faculty and her role there, seen how Ricky seemed happy and carefree for the first time since J.B. had met him. Whatever had affected his one-time allies, it had gotten them well and truly hooked. As such, J.B. would have to leave alone, and console himself with the fact that Heaven Falls was safe and that his former companions would not come to any harm there. That wasn’t much, but it was what it was.
J.B. outlined his intentions to Doc as the white-haired old man splashed water on his face and prepped to shave.
“I am not comfortable with this, John Barrymore,” Doc insisted, lathering his face with soap.
“I’ll be out of your hair in two or three hours,” J.B. assured him, leaning against the frame of the little washroom. “You won’t see me for dust after that.”
“And good riddance,” Doc muttered, loudly enough for J.B. to hear.
The Armorer looked at the scarecrow-like old man, thinking of all that they had been through together. “I always figured we’d go down in a hail of bullets,” he told Doc. “Never like this.”
Doc turned and glared at the Armorer with a piercing stare. “Well, you’ve made your decision. Stick with it and leave us be.”
J.B. nodded. “I’ll do that.” He stepped away from the doorway then and paced back into the main room of the shack, taking a seat in one of the wooden chairs. The whole situation was a mess, and he had an inkling that if he riled up Doc too much the old coot would turn him over to the Melissas.
Doc joined J.B. a few minutes later, the skin of his chin a little redder where he had shaved. J.B. sat with his outdoor jacket on and his fedora in his lap, playing idly with the headband. He looked up at Doc sullenly as the old man entered the room in undershirt and pants.
; “You should eat something before you depart,” Doc said. It was conciliation to the friendship they had shared, and J.B. could not help but be surprised by it.
“That’s mighty generous of you,” J.B. said. He stood, tossed his hat onto the chair and strode across to the kitchen area to help the old man prepare breakfast.
“You have a long day ahead,” Doc said as he reached into a cupboard for one of several clay pots of honey he had stored there. “I do not rate your chances out in the wild, but I will not be a party to your death through starvation.”
“Nice that you care,” J.B. said bitterly, taking a knife from the counter and working it into the crust of a half-eaten loaf.
Doc seethed at the comment, placing the pot of honey on the countertop with a thump. “You ungrateful wretch!” he snarled. “We came to the Trai with nothing and they welcomed us to the Home with open arms. They have shared everything with us—food, shelter, things that are hard to come by in this world—and they ask nothing of us in return but that we help farm and build, help them grow. We have been welcomed into paradise without question. But you, sir, are the serpent in the Garden of Eden.” Doc thrust his outstretched finger into J.B.’s chest.
“You’re wrong, Doc,” J.B. insisted, “but it won’t register with you. None of you. You’ve got yourself so suckered into this Heaven Falls scam that you’ve forgotten that the only place heaven can fall is into hell!” He shoved Doc back and stepped away from the counter.
The old man stumbled backward, his arms flailing as he was batted into the wooden counter. His flailing limb caught the contents of the counter and in a second the bread, knife and flask of honey fell to the wooden floor. The flask shattered with a loud crash.
Doc stood there reeling while J.B. glared at him, shocked at what they had come to. “I’ll go,” J.B. said, reaching for the handle of the back door.
“You should,” Doc said angrily.
As J.B. turned the doorknob something on his lapel caught his eye. The tiny radiation meter that he wore there had suddenly flickered into the hot zone. “What!” J.B. muttered.
For a moment the Armorer stood unmoving, staring incredulously at the rad counter. Then he turned back to the kitchen, his gaze racing across Doc’s face and the room around him. Something had just changed and that something had set the rad counter off. J.B. scanned the room until his gaze settled on the ruined breakfast that lay strewed across the floor. Without a word, he leaned down, bringing the lapel of his jacket close to the shattered honeypot and half-finished loaf. The rad counter went into overdrive, warning its user that the radiation here was very high.
“The honey,” J.B. whispered after a moment. “The stupid bastards have been feeding on radioactive honey.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Doc stood over J.B. as the Armorer stared at the spilled honey, the rad counter on his lapel showing the needle hard in the red zone.
“John Barrymore?” Doc said. “What...are you doing?”
Kneeling on the kitchen floor, J.B. stared at the glutinous honey as it began to inch slowly across the floorboards where it had spilled. “There’s something in the honey,” he stated.
“You fool! I eat that honey every day,” Doc snapped at him.
J.B. looked up, the concern clear on his face. “I’d stop. Right now.”
Doc struggled to process what J.B. had just said, the bewilderment and frustration clear on his lined face. “What is it you are saying?” he demanded.
J.B. stood and brushed the old man aside, reaching for the cupboard where the kitchen supplies were stored. There were three unopened pots of honey standing on the shelf. J.B. took the leftmost and uncapped the lid.
“John Barrymore Dix!” Doc snapped. “This is madness! What do you think you are—?”
J.B. ignored the man, opening the pot and bringing his radiation counter close to the revealed contents. “This honey is irradiated,” he stated calmly.
J.B. grabbed the next flask and uncapped it while Doc watched.
“This, too,” J.B. said. “Probably they all are.”
“How can this be?” Doc demanded. “I help harvest this honey. It’s made by bees all around Heaven Falls.”
J.B. shrugged. “Fallout from the nukes, mebbe. Whatever caused it has entered the food cycle at some stage. Could even be in the pollen that your bees are collecting.”
“They are not my bees,” Doc said defensively.
J.B. brushed the objection aside. “We need to get this out of your house right away,” he said, snatching up the open pots of honey and marching to the open back door. “Do you have more?”
“What?”
“More honey!” J.B. snarled. “Do you have more?”
“I...I have a jar in the bedchamber,” Doc admitted. “I work with the honey, it is entirely proper that I...”
“I’m not accusing you of stealing it, Doc,” J.B. told him as he threw the clay pots out onto the grass. “Listen to me. Don’t you understand? This shit you eat is red-hot with radiation.”
Doc stood there openmouthed, trying to comprehend J.B.’s words.
J.B. was back at the cupboard. He grabbed the last pot of honey and launched it overarm through the open back door, smiling grimly when he heard it shatter on the ground outside. “You said you had more in the bedroom,” he growled. “Show me.”
Bewildered, Doc led the way to his bedroom and pointed to the night table. It featured an extinguished candle on its top and a shelf set midway below. There was a four-inch-tall clay jar resting on the shelf, a sheet of muslin cinched around its open top with a string. J.B. grabbed the pot and marched to the front door of the property—the nearest exit. He pulled the door open and prepared to toss the clay vessel away when he stopped. Walking along the dirt path not twenty feet from him were two Melissas: Linda and another he did not recognize. They spotted him at the same moment as he saw them.
“Violator!” they cried as one.
J.B. reacted as swift as thought, dropping the pot on the stoop and slamming the door closed. Then he spun and grabbed Doc as the old man came ambling out of his bedroom.
“Where’s your blaster? Quickly!” J.B. demanded.
“I-it was put away.”
“Where?” J.B. growled, but he had already spied the lockbox located outside the washroom and he marched toward it.
Doc followed, glancing back at the front door. “What is going on? What did you see?”
J.B. slid down on his knees and worked the catch of the lockbox, pulling the lid up. Inside there was Doc’s commemorative LeMat and a handful of bullets, and beside it was Jak’s Colt Python, which the albino had left behind when he’d moved out of the property. J.B. grabbed both, checking the barrel of the Python with a professional eye. It was still loaded the way Jak had left it. Naturally suspicious, Jak had doubtless put the blaster away with the thought he may need it in a hurry.
“That untrusting son of a bitch!” J.B. said, smiling as he raised the loaded Colt in a steady, one-handed grip and targeted the front door. It felt good to have a blaster in his hand again; the weight was just right, like a missing limb replaced.
“Doc, you need to get down,” he said, his eyes fixed on the door.
An instant later the front door swung open and Linda came striding into the cabin, her brunette locks fluttering behind her in the breeze. J.B. squeezed the Colt’s trigger and sent a .357 slug straight through the woman’s forehead. The boom of blasterfire sounded surreal after so long without it; almost two weeks away from the carnage of the Deathlands had changed everything.
J.B. watched grimly as Linda fell backward, a red smear materializing dead center between her eyes.
The other Melissa was just outside, and hearing the report of the blaster she stopped, horrified. J.B. was on his feet immediately, bringing the blaster around and trying to get a bead on the white-robed woman where the frame of the door obscured her.
“Violator!” the Melissa shouted. “Place your blaster on the floor righ
t now.”
“Not going to happen,” J.B. snarled as he sent a bullet through the room toward her.
The bullet clipped the edge of the door frame by the Melissa’s face, sending a shower of splinters into the air. The woman screamed, leaped back and brushed the tiny flecks aside, her eyes screwed tightly shut.
J.B. kept moving, striding across the room with the Colt Python extended in front of him. Doc had stepped aside when the shooting began, and he looked bewildered as J.B. passed him.
“This is yours,” J.B. said, thrusting the LeMat blaster into Doc’s gut as he strode past.
Doc’s hands bent around the weapon in surprise.
“Don’t shoot me in the back,” J.B. told him without turning.
Then the Armorer was at the door, his eyes scanning the exterior for the second Melissa. It was still early, an hour or so after sunrise, and Heaven Falls was still waking up. People could be seen in the distance, heading off to the farms, the medical faculty or the construction sites. There was a little mist between the trees, hanging low like bleached cotton candy.
J.B. peered left and right, trying to find the woman who had ducked away from his shot. She was dressed in the flowing white robes of a Melissa, and she had hair styled the way they all wore it while on shift, red locks piled atop her head with twisting curls wafting down past her ears. That red hair and white dress should make her easy to spot, J.B. thought, and yet he could not see her. She had been here not five seconds before—there was nowhere she could have disappeared to.
Then J.B. heard the noise coming from above and behind him, and he spun and ducked in the same movement as the unnamed Melissa leaped down at him from her hiding place on the roof of Doc’s cabin. J.B.’s swift reaction saved him from a broken neck. Instead, the woman in white collided with the top of his left arm with the force of a hammer, and the two of them sank to the dirt in a tangle of limbs.
Shifting his weight, J.B. tried to scramble away, to put enough distance between himself and his attacker to take a shot at her. But her body was on him, the weight of it dragging at his waist and legs where she had dropped. She reached up for him with slender arms, her hands hooked into claws. J.B. batted her hands away with his left hand, whipped the blaster around and tried to aim. The Melissa swiped at the weapon’s muzzle, jarring it with such force that J.B.’s hand shot upward and he almost lost his grip on the weapon entirely.