Strontium Swamp

by James Axler

Down by the lake, in front of the land-built huts of the settlement, was a patch of land that the albino had decided would be useful as a practice ground. He gathered groups, ten at a time, to attempt to instruct them in what was needed for the fight ahead. Demonstrating holds that would cut blood and air supplies to their enemies when approached from behind, he used other settlement dwellers as “victims,” then paired off the remainder, according to what he perceived as their ability and experience, changing the pairings as he observed their skills and capacities. His notion was to bring together a front-line force from within the settlement that he could use as a guerrilla troop in the plan that was beginning to form in his mind.

  But that sometimes meant that those with deep-seated antipathies went up against each other. Such was the situation when he paired Marissa and Prideaux in knife combat.

  Knives were something that the settlement had in abundance. Sometimes their origins were unidentifiable, but they were sharp enough to do the job.

  And as Marissa and Prideaux began to circle each other, it became apparent that despite the nature of the session, there was to be no quarter given.

  “So, princess, you gonna show off your skills in front of your new man, are you?” he taunted her, feinting as he hoped to distract her attention.

  “Have to do lot better than that, little man,” she said, thrusting at him. He parried her easily and tripped her. She rolled as she fell, away from the arc of his blade that sliced the air around her dark mane.

  “Bitch—you never gave me a chance, and now you and that stupe white asshole of yours are gonna get us all chilled,” he hissed at her, whirling to parry an overhand strike, kicking out at her and landing a foot in the middle of her stomach. She grunted as the air was forced from her body, her diaphragm contracting under the force of the blow. She doubled up as he came in to strike with an underhand blow, but caught enough of a sight of him to realize his intent.

  Throwing herself backward, gasping air back into her lungs, forcing herself to breathe, she flipped and landed awkwardly, stumbling to one side. But it was enough, as his upward thrust into thin air had unbalanced him and he stumbled as he tried to halt his momentum and stay his forward movement…a movement that would bring him directly in line with her knife hand.

  “You don’t believe in us, you can never be one of us,” she gritted, making ready to place a blow between shoulders, aiming for the juncture of his throat and chest cavity. His stance was completely open and there was nothing he could do to prevent her from chilling him.

  Jak stepped in. Moving with the preternatural speed he had developed over years of hunting, he came between the two of them, forcing Prideaux to one side so that he stumbled and fell harmlessly. His left arm shot up in a straight-arm blow that pushed Marissa’s hand to one side, the force of the blow numbing her fingers and making her drop the blade. His right hand, bunched into a fist, hit her with a sharp jab at the point of the jaw. She crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

  Jak whirled to where Prideaux was just regaining his balance. The ponytailed man looked confused. He had thought he was about to buy the farm, and hadn’t expected Jak to save him. Moreover, he hadn’t expected the albino to treat Marissa in such a fashion.

  “Look, all are same now,” Jak yelled, as much to the assembled crowd as to Prideaux. “No one better than others. All in this together. All stand or fall together. All the same,” he reiterated, fixing his stare on the confused Prideaux. Then, before the man had a chance to work out what was happening, Jak hit him with an uppercut that took him off his feet, depositing him on the ground with a thud.

  “We all learn from this, or we try to fight each other instead of Jean?” he asked the assembled throng, scanning their faces for signs of dissent. He could see some sullen expressions that bespoke of unease, but there was no audible dissent.

  “Okay, now we learn, okay?”

  There was no indication that the settlement dwellers were now anything other than rapt, ready to prepare for combat. But just maybe they were too scared to face down Jak Lauren. Maybe they still weren’t convinced.

  And if they weren’t convinced of their own power, how could they fight effectively?

  ON THE MORNING of the third day, it was time for the five companions to move on.

  “You could always stay a little longer,” Beausoleil said as they gathered to go. “With the training for the raid going down, we’re short of hunters. Someone has to bring in the food.”

  “Yeah, but we eat as much as we catch—mebbe more,” Ryan replied with a smile, “so it doesn’t really figure.”

  “Mebbe not,” the old man agreed. “But mebbe I was figurin’ you could come in useful around here. Face it, we need all the help we can get. Young Lauren’s good, but he can’t do it all alone.”

  “And he can’t do it with us,” Ryan stated firmly. “There’s no changing that.”

  Nonetheless, the others caught the note in his voice, it was a note of regret that it should end like this, that they should have to walk away from Jak.

  The albino caught it, too. He came out to see them off, with Marissa in his wake. Never one for goodbyes, he stood apart from the group as they gathered their baggage for the haul ahead. J.B. had taken a reading with his minisextant, and they had worked out the direction of the redoubt. Perhaps it would be in the hands of Dr. Jean and his sec, perhaps not. If it proved to be impregnable, they would just strike on past it until they found the next ville on their route.

  “Jak, been a long time. We’re going to miss you,” Ryan said, fixing the albino with his single, ice-blue orb.

  “Miss you—but know why you go,” Jak replied simply.

  The companions struck out for the heart of the swamp. LaRue would go with them part of the way, to guide them to nearest clear-cut path that would put them on course.

  Doc could feel tears of sadness and nostalgia well up as they left the albino behind. No one looked back except the old man. The others kept their eyes fixed on the path ahead, not trusting themselves, and knowing that Jak wouldn’t want it any other way. But Doc cast a glance over his shoulder. Jak stood watching them as they melted into the foliage, his scarred white face as inscrutable as ever. Marissa stood by his side. Despite having someone so near, Doc had never seen Jak look so alone.

  A single tear trickled slowly down his cheek. In truth, he couldn’t tell if it was for leaving Jak behind or for himself, as if this incident had brought home to him the losses they had suffered as a group over the years, and going back farther, the losses that he had suffered over a life that had spanned centuries.

  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Another one bites the dust. From the earth we come and to the earth we return, and in between is naught but suffering…

  Doc looked away, eyes now fixed firmly ahead.

  LARUE LED THEM out of the maze of paths that linked the settlement to the main tracks leading through the swamp. It was a long and arduous haul, with the bald man setting a fast pace. No one wanted to speak; there were mixed emotions among the companions. All agreed with Ryan’s decision on an intellectual level, and yet all of them—even the one-eyed man himself—felt that in some way they were letting Jak down by leaving in this manner.

  There was nothing about LaRue’s bearing that suggested that he felt any differently. As the swamp dweller detailed to guide them, he set a fearsome pace, hacking his way through thick undergrowth and crossing treacherous stretches of quicksand without a chance of the companions following his footsteps with anything other than blind faith. It was obvious that he wanted to get this task out of the way as soon as possible, and get back to the settlement.

  Eventually, after several hours without a break, they reached a plateau where the land stretched ahead in a winding, natural path. LaRue stopped dead and turned to them.

  “This is as far as I go. You know your direction from here, and you’re back on the trails that you were using before we found you.”

  “Thanks. Thought we weren’t gonna get th
at far, the pace you were setting,” Ryan commented.

  LaRue sniffed. “Yeah, well, figure the sooner get rid of you and get back to training, the better.”

  “You that keen to go and fight?” Krysty asked, sensing that the man wanted to say more, but would need prompting.

  LaRue fixed her with a penetrating stare and tugged at his beard. “Y’mean, am I keen to buy the farm? No, I like living, even if it is hard. It’s better than the other way. But I figure if we got any kind of a chance, then it needs all the fighters like me and Prideaux and Rissa to pull together, ’cause little Whitey ain’t had much chance to pull us together, and if you wanna know what I really think, he ain’t got much to work with. Some of us can fight, and others farm and hunt, and others ain’t really up to much. We can stick together ’cause we ain’t got jackshit but each other. Only now we all got to fight, and some don’t want to and some can’t. If you’d helped us, things would have been better.”

  “You think we’re taking the easy way out?” Krysty asked.

  A smile twisted across his face. “Mebbe…mebbe it ain’t so easy to leave Whitey behind after so long. Fighting together gets you kinda close, so I ain’t gonna say. See, me ‘n’ Prideaux don’t like each other, but I know I’ll always back the fucker in a firefight ’cause it’s bigger than us. Mebbe it ain’t so easy for you—” he shook his head sadly “—but, y’know, we coulda done with you along for the ride.”

  “Not our fight,” Ryan said simply. “And we’ve got our own way to go.”

  LaRue sniffed. “Yeah, well, you know your way from here, so that’s all I care about. I gotta go. Mebbe see you one day on that place where fighters go when they buy the farm.”

  The bald man turned on his heel and struck back into the undergrowth, being swallowed up by the foliage and leaving the companions standing by the open track. They stayed still and silent for some moments.

  “Think he’s right?” Mildred asked finally, if only to break the silence.

  “Mebbe he is,” Ryan mused. “Wasn’t a right or wrong in this.” He looked up at the sky, noting the position of the sun. “Got a few hours before the darkness falls. Let’s try to make some progress…”

  They set out in the direction of the redoubt, which was still a two-day trek, by their reckonings. If they could make some headway on the distance by nightfall, then they could set up camp out of the way of any main paths, hopefully avoiding the sec patrols from Lafayette. In the meantime, they had to keep an eye out for swampies in search of food.

  Avoiding the places where the muties could hide themselves with ease, they made a swift progress. And yet an air of depression hung over them. Without Jak, they felt incomplete. Leaving him had been one of the toughest decisions they had made.

  As the sun began to fall and the twilight turned the swamp into a land of shadows, they deviated from the open spaces to find a dry, secluded place into which to set up camp. They carried with them nothing but the self-heats and some water they had taken from the wells in the settlement. There was so little food in the rebel ville that they would have felt wrong taking any of it, even if it did condemn them to the chem-soaked gruel until they could hunt once more.

  The camp was well-hidden as night came, and they settled in to rest for the night, with a rotating watch. Ryan took first watch, with Mildred relieving him after a couple of hours. As used as they were to sleeping for short periods, the medic found herself coming awake in the darkness almost on cue. She looked at her wrist chron, the light from the moon penetrating the cloud cover just enough to show that she was only a few minutes away from her shift.

  She shook the sleep from her muzzy head and rose slowly, creeping through the undergrowth to where Ryan had established a watch post.

  He turned as he heard her making her way toward him. She was quiet, but he was still able to pick her out. As he became visible in the gloom, she could see that he was indicating that she be quieter.

  Her brow furrowed. Beyond the one-eyed man she could hear some movement. She went triple-red as she drew nearer, taking each step carefully. As she reached Ryan, he gestured with an inclination of the head that she look beyond, but with caution. Now that she was close, she could hear more movement beyond the sentry post.

  Ryan had chosen to make his post behind a group of swamp plants that gave off a noxious odor, and were clumped so thickly that they suggested they extended back for a depth of several feet. In fact, the shallow-rooted plants extended in a horse-shoe shape, needing muddy soil to root and finding a rock shelf barring their progress. It was perfect for Ryan to use as cover.

  As Mildred joined him, she could see a group of three sec men on patrol. In a cluster, they moved as though on an assigned route from which they never deviated. Dressed in the orange-and-purple dyed camou that signified Dr. Jean’s men, two of them carried AK47s, while the third had an Uzi. All carried their blasters with the barrels down, and all were wearing infrared goggles. They turned their heads as though on strings, moving almost exactly in unison. They were well-programmed machines, but seemed to have no independent senses.

  Mildred and Ryan exchanged glances. The sec men were making no attempt to do anything other than follow this route. They had to do this every night, exactly the same.

  Exactly.

  If they were this inflexible, then they should be easy to slip past. Maybe Jak should know this. Maybe it would be possible. What was it J.B. had said? The people were so brainwashed by Dr. Jean that they couldn’t adjust to sudden changes, to sudden explosions of action. And Ryan had seen the arrogance of the oppressor at work. So unused to opposition that there were gaping holes in the defenses that had never been tested, both physically and psychologically.

  But it was something else that made up their minds. As the sec trio passed so close to Ryan and Mildred that they could almost have reached out and touched them, in the silence of the swamp night they could hear the faint hiss and crackle of static, and the high, tinny murmur a voice that seemed to emanate from the heads of the trio. Looking closely, Mildred and Ryan could see that the headsets that held the infrared goggles to the heads of the trio also had earpieces attached that were plugged into the right ear of each man.

  So Dr. Jean did have radio-transmitter old tech that was working. Ryan realized how lucky they had been on their recce mission to Lafayette.

  As the trio receded into the swamps, Ryan beckoned Mildred to follow him, and he broke cover, moving quickly and silently back in the direction the sec patrol had come. Mildred followed, half guessing Ryan’s intent.

  The one-eyed man gestured her off the path when he caught sight of the wag that had brought the patrol to this point. Mildred understood what he was seeking. As they approached, she could hear the whine of static and the distinct tones of a distorted human voice. The driver of the wag sat in the cab, an M-16 across his lap, looking blankly ahead through the infrared goggles, and listening to the voice on a small loudspeaker that was set in the wag’s dash.

  “…glory of the great Dr. Jean. The next sacrifice to the old gods will be three nights from now, and those honored with the task of taking the lord’s blessings into the next realm will be those who are ranged against us in the swamps. The military detachments leave in two nights to round up these heathens who have rejected the glories of Jean. They will be blessed and sent into the next realm to realize their mistakes and bring Jean’s requests for glory to the gods. Dr. Jean wants you to redouble efforts and bring your own sacrifice to the shrine during this night and the next, so that the gods will look kindly upon our sec force.”

  Ryan gestured to Mildred that they should pull back into cover. They retreated the way they had come, then took refuge in the cover of the noxious plants.

  “That screws everything,” Ryan stated. “I know what I said before, but this is different. There’s no way that I can let these bastards pour into the swamp and take Jak’s people by surprise. There’s no way they’ve got the numbers to withstand it unless they’re warned
. We’re going to have to go back, warn him, and stand and fight. We can’t let him face this alone.”

  Mildred raised an eyebrow. “You think I’m not going to agree with you, Ryan? Hell, this is one time I’d gladly follow orders. Let’s get back to camp and the others. I don’t think even Doc’s going to mind being roused from his beauty sleep over this one.”

  “SICK YOU FUCKERS. You want fight Jean or each other?” Jak yelled at the assembled force. “You want fight, okay, we go fight that fucker now, ready or not. Leave longer, then all do is kick fuck out each other.”

  The albino hunter turned his back in disgust and walked off toward the shadows where the edge of the settlement bled into the swamps, and the light of the lamps grew dim.

  Marissa cast flashing, dark eyes over the swamp dwellers who stood mute, frozen in astonishment at Jak’s outburst. It was the most they had heard him speak in the time he had been at the settlement. The normally taciturn fighter had been spurred into the outburst by yet more dissent among the ranks of the settlement rebels who were of the right age to fight.

  “You stupe bastards,” Marissa hissed at them. “This is our chance to fight back against that scum Jean, and yet you want to fight among yourselves. Don’t you realize that fate sent Jak here, now, so that we could unite and do this? What about all your families who died or are now zombies under Jean’s control? Doesn’t that hurt you in here?” she asked, thumping her chest. “Doesn’t that chill you just to think about it? You want to end up like this or hiding like a stupe beaten dog in the middle of swamp, hoping that you don’t get caught, for the rest of your life?”

  As if Jak’s outburst had not been enough, now Marissa’s equal explosion left them even more speechless. They all knew her history, which she hadn’t told Jak. Marissa’s brother and her husband, one chilled and the other now a sec man zombie, moving with those glasses that hide the dead eyes; her child, just a babe in arms, lost when West Lowellton fell to Jean’s advancing forces.

  Maybe she felt that she had a bigger ax to grind with Dr. Jean—to bury in his sick skull—than any of the others in the settlement. And maybe she was right. It had seemed to affect her much more deeply than the other survivors, who had accepted the vagaries of fate and had tried to just carry on living without thinking too deeply about what had happened to them.