Seedling

by James Axler

  J.B. broke the silence. "It's not like any redoubt I ever saw."

  "More like any ruined ville anywhere," Ryan agreed. "But why build a gateway in a place like this?"

  "Where is this?" Mildred asked.

  "Good question." Krysty looked around. "Got a big ville feel to it. Not like someplace out in the des­erts or mountains."

  Doc wrinkled his nose. "I once paid a visit to old London town. Before… before I came to when I am now. I visited the stews of Seven Dials and the bor­dello slums of Hoxton. I confess the scent that now assails my nostrils is oddly reminiscent of that noi­some place."

  "London in Victorian times, Doc!" Ryan laughed. "We've been most places and seen most things with the jumps, but never through time."

  "Not yet," Doc said quietly.

  "You said all the experiments failed in trawling people through time. Except you."

  The old man stood up, kicking at a flattened piece of metal that spun across the filthy floor.' "There were stories, my dear old friend, stories I could tell that would make a bold heart weep with… But what was I saying?"

  "Time travel," Ryan reminded him.

  "You don't mean freezies, like me, do you? More cryo-centers?" Mildred asked eagerly.

  Doc sniffed. "I fear that I don't know. Can't re­call what I was saying. Apologies to all of this com­pany."

  Ryan also stood up. "Best to go take a look out­side and see where we are."

  In his heart Ryan thrilled to the idea that they might one day stumble upon a viable way of temporal travel.

  Like many people in Deathlands, he was often occu­pied with the idea of getting back to the golden days before the long winters and sky-dark. To see the world of myth and legend when cities towered a thousand feet high, topped with onyx and chalcedo­ny before man's madness turned inward and he rent his universe apart.

  But he knew this would never happen.

  The mat-trans units had been a closely guarded se­cret, with their ability to transport anything over thousands of miles in the blinking of an eye. But if only they could have conquered time travel…

  Mildred brushed dirt off her clothes. "Kirk was wrong," she said. "It's time that's the final frontier, isn't it? Space was easy."

  "HOW COME NOBODY GOT into the gateway?" Mildred asked as they picked their way slowly up the ruined stairs toward the ghostly light.

  "Not many people in Deathlands have the fire­power to blow sec doors like those on the elevator," J.B. replied, pausing to offer the black woman a hand over a tangle of twisted wire.

  "Thanks," she said. "What if someone comes down there now, with the doors open?"

  "They'd need a lot of preparation and three hun­dred feet of rope," the Armorer replied.

  "We'll need the same," Ryan added. "Something to bear in mind when we come to try and get back again to the gateway chamber."

  Kiysty had taken the lead, her heels clicking on the moist stone. She'd drawn her silvered Heckler & Koch 9 mm blaster, holding it cocked and ready in her right hand.

  "I can smell rain," she announced.

  "Better keep talk for a red emergency," Ryan sug­gested. "Could be anyone—or anything—waiting for us out there."

  They were clearly now in the basement of a devas­tated house. It had been totally pillaged, probably shortly after nuke-death sprayed from the skies, and now was no more than a hollow shell. But there was evidence of a long-gone grandeur.

  Doc paused at a turn of the stair, ignoring the warning about keeping talk to a minimum. "If I didn't know better, my dear Ryan, I would have said that we were in…San Francisco or Chicago or Bos­ton or New York or Philadelphia—a northern me­tropolis of some sort."

  "Why?"

  "The feel of the building. Angles between walls and ceilings. Look at the shattered remnants of the cornices and the broken plasterwork around where the light fittings once hung."

  "We visited Newyork once, didn't we? Well, sort of sailed right on by it." Ryan remembered that trip, on a sullen raft, floating through tendrils of miasmic mist, along what had once been called the Hudson River. They'd fought off grossly violent muties and had seen what remained of the city. Darting lights had flicked among the rubble, like corpse candles in a swampy wilderness.

  "I remember that." Doc's voice boomed out, ech­oing through the ruins.

  "Shut up, Doc."

  "What was that, Ryan, my—"

  "Just lip-zip will you?"

  "Roger and out."

  Ryan wondered what that meant. The main thing was the old man finally kept quiet.

  Krysty had paused, holding up her hand and beckoning for Ryan to join her. His own blaster ready, he climbed carefully up the stairs. Now he could feel and taste rain on his face, drifting through from the open air, close above them. It had a slightly acidic flavor to it.

  "What time of day is it, lover?" she whispered.

  He checked his wrist chron. "Last place we went it'd be around six in the evening. Never be sure after a jump, but it must be some time around late afternoon or near to night."

  "Assuming we're still in Deathlands," she said, brushing the drizzling mist off her face. It clung in a diamond veil to the burning red hair, now curled tightly around her head and neck.

  "Yeah." He glanced behind him, making sure the others were ready, knowing they would be. Nobody ever got chilled by checking twice was what the Trader used to say, and he'd lived long and lived hard.

  The stairs ended in open air, surrounded by piles of rubble. Chunks of brick and concrete, knitted to­gether in a mad frieze with coils of steel, were deco­rated with thousands of splinters of ash-smeared glass, shutting out any view of the immediate sur­roundings of the building.

  The sky was the color of molten lead, laced through with streaks of pinkish-gold. A small rain was blow­ing in from Ryan's right, sending trickles of water over the top few steps. Surprisingly there were flow­ers growing from the fragmented stone, tiny yellow and white daisies that he'd seen in many other blasted places throughout Deathlands, and crimson-purple fireweed, waving in a light breeze.

  Ryan stood still, head just below the level of the fallen ramparts, taking several slow, deep breaths, checking and analyzing what he could smell.

  Behind him Krysty was doing the same thing. "Smoke. Cooking fires," she pronounced.

  "Lot of them around but nothing very close," he agreed. Very cautiously the one-eyed man pushed his head above the scattered rubble, squinting around. "Fireblast." He whistled softly.

  "What?" Krysty asked.

  Ryan shook his head. "Real big, big ville. Could be Newyork."

  "Anyone?" J.B. called from a couple of stairs lower.

  "Nobody in sight. Big bastard of a gray rat just went away over there, but there's just ruined build­ings, far as I can see."

  Krysty moved carefully to join him. "Gaia! I don't think I've ever seen… It goes for miles and miles. I never knew there was a city this big anywhere in Death—I mean in the United States. Look at it."

  "Can we come up?" Mildred asked. "The sus­pense is killing."

  "Sure," Krysty replied. "But don't stick your head out too far."

  All five of them leaned on the bricks and concrete, marveling at the dry of desolation before them. Over to their left Ryan noticed the distant glint of water. "River there. Or the sea."

  "Doesn't smell strongly enough of salt to be the sea," Krysty said, "but there is the sea somewhere not too many miles away. What big city could it be, Doc? Mildred?"

  They both shook their heads. Doc scratched the silver stubble around his creviced chin. "Not San Francisco. Not enough hills."

  "Nor Chicago," Mildred said.

  "How about Newyork?" J.R offered.

  "Can't we get out and have a small walk around?" Mildred asked. "I mean, one expanse of wrecked homes looks a lot like another."

  "Sun's setting," Ryan said. "So that river over there could be the Hudson, couldn't it?"

  "It's to the west of us, true enough. But it's po
ssi­ble that this might be the district called Queens. Then the river to the west of us would be the East River. So confusing."

  "And it might not even be Newyork in the first place," Krysty said. "That what you're both saying to us?"

  Doc nodded. Mildred looked around, face puz­zled. "I don't know. There's just a sort of New York feel in the air. But…" She shrugged.

  There weren't any signs of hostile life, apart from the rat. Ryan led them out into the open.

  All of them stared toward the thin ribbon of wa­ter, tinted bloodied by the sun setting over some higher ground beyond it.

  Without warning a metallic click sounded behind them.

  Chapter Seven

  J.B.'S VOICE BREATHED in Ryan's ear. "It's an AK-47. Looks like it's got a 30-round box mag on it."

  At a range of twenty yards there was a fair chance the person behind the blaster could cut all five of them into bloody tatters. If he was any good with the weapon.

  "Hey! Where you outlanders coming from?"

  The voice was thin and reedy, but with an infinite coldness to it that held Ryan and the others very still.

  "Asked you fuckers a question."

  "Passing through the ville, son," Ryan replied.

  "Don't call me 'son,' you one-eyed son of a bitch. I got a name."

  "What's that?"

  "What's what?"

  Now Ryan was becoming confused. "What's what? What's your name?"

  "Name's Dred."

  "Dred. How d'you spell that?"

  The young man stepped out from cover, the AK-47 still threatening them. "How do I know? I never took on writing and that shit."

  There was a piece of broken wood near him, and he reached out with his left hand, scrawling painstak­ingly in the mud by his feet: D-R-E-D. "There. That's my tag. Dred."

  Ryan nodded. "Sure. Dred."

  The lad looked to be around eighteen, and he was short, barely five-six. His clothes were a ragged as­sortment of old and patched and makeshift. His feet were hidden inside ill-matching shoes. The left was like an ancient basketball sneaker, wound around with thin red wire. The right was a once-elegant brogue with black-and-white uppers.

  Dred's hair was extremely long, twined into nar­row plaits that appeared to have been coated in dark clay. He had pale skin and light blue eyes. The way he handled the heavy weapon convinced Ryan that this was a young man who'd already learned the difficult craft of chilling.

  "What are your names, and why don't you have colors shown?"

  "He remind you of anyone, lover?" Krysty whis­pered.

  Ryan nodded, knowing she was thinking of Jak Lauren.

  "Names." The barrel of the gun weaved a pattern in front of them.

  Ryan's guesstimate was that the boy could be taken out, but it would mean at least one of them buying the farm. Maybe two or three, depending on how good Dred was.

  "I'm Ryan. This is Doc, J.B., Krysty and Mildred. We're passing through. Been looking for shelter for the night."

  "Fucking oldies. Wrinklies!" He spit in the dirt. "No gang'd take you."

  "Pardon me, my young fellow," Doc said. "Could you possibly enlighten me as to the nomenclature of this fair metropolis?"

  "You want your balls shot off?"

  Doc sighed. "Not quite the response I'd hoped to elicit."

  "He asked what's the name of this ville," Krysty explained.

  "Oh." The youth nodded his understanding. "The ville… Hey, you mean this turf?"

  "Turf?" Now it was Krysty's turn to look be­mused.

  Mildred helped her out. "I know the word. Means the territory of a street gang."

  "Right, lady. That's it. This is the Hawks' turf. Me, Dred, is the pres of the Hawks. We run this section of the Southbronx."

  "So it is New York!" Doc exclaimed. "Upon my soul, I thought it was."

  "You going to chill us all, son?" J.B. asked casu­ally.

  "Call me 'son' again and I will."

  The Armorer showed a tight, narrow grin, turning to Ryan. "He remind you of an old friend? Sure he does."

  Dred looked puzzled. "How come none of you is shitting bricks at this blaster?"

  Ryan took a careful half step forward. "We've been all over Deathlands, Dred, and seen plenty of kill­ing. You've got the ace on the line here, but you can't take out more than one—mebbe two—of us. Then you're faceup with rain falling into open eyes."

  "You figure?"

  "I figure."

  "That a threat, outie?"

  "Promise."

  Ryan could almost hear tiny cogs grinding in the boy's head. There was a difference from Jak. He'd been quicker, like spilled mercury. "What do you want, then?"

  "The blaster down. Then tell us a place for the night and some place to get eats."

  "You might be with the Peaks. Or the Chivs. Or the gang of scalies downriver."

  "I'm getting tired, Dred. Put that blaster down, or pull on the trigger."

  Dred grinned for the first time, revealing his truly hideous teeth. There was a variety of jagged, black­ened stumps leaning into the dark gaps. "Sure."

  THE BOY SHOWED THEM one of what he claimed were several gang hideouts all across that part of the ville.

  Mildred managed to talk quietly to Ryan as they all moved across the landscape of lunar rubble, explain­ing to him what and where the South Bronx had been.

  "Lot of decent folks, but a lot of bandits," she said. "If that's the Hudson, then somewhere behind us must be what's left of Yankee Stadium."

  "Baseball," Ryan said, dragging up an old mem­ory. "Saw some old vids of games… Can't remem­ber where or when that was."

  Dred turned, making Ryan realize how sharp his hearing must be. "Yankee Stadium's still here. Most of the top's gone, but there's still the field. Even a bit of grass is growing."

  "Is that in your part of the ville?" J.B. asked.

  "Our turf? Sure is."

  The sun was sinking fast across the slow-flowing streak of silvery water to the west. Ryan could just make out the vestigial remains of the piers of a mas­sive bridge. "What's that called, over the Hudson?"

  Dred laughed, a strange, almost silent convulsion. He doubled up, one hand across his ravaged mouth, shoulders shaking. "Hudson! Fucking triple-stupe outies! Not the Hudson."

  "Not?" Mildred said. "But it must be. Oh, we're farther south. Then it's…" She closed her eyes with the effort of trying to remember. "I know. It's the Harlem River, isn't it?"

  Dred looked disappointed, his laughter stopping as suddenly as it had started. "Right. Don't know what the bridge was called. It all fell down in the days of the smoke clouds."

  "What's the rest of the ville like—" Ryan pointed southward "—that way? Manhattan. The main part of the ville. What's it like down there?"

  "All fallen. Go look. Get your fucking nose scraped off and your cock nailed to your head."

  Doc smiled. "Sounds to me that nothing much has changed in the past two hundred years."

  Dred moved on, hopping with an ungainly ease, ducking and weaving between the devastation. It was absurdly simple to lose your way. Some of the rubble was flatter than a roach's belly. Other piles stood fifty feet high, with gaping windows and sagging door­ways.

  Ryan had taken a few moments to look behind as they left the building that held the hidden gateway, making sure he could memorize it, ready for when they needed to get back.

  It looked as though it had once been a conven­tional late-nineteenth-century mansion, and he won­dered how it had come to house all those expensively secret installations.

  "Here, outies."

  The boy had vanished, plaits flying behind him, diving into a gaping hole that looked like hundreds of other gaping holes—except for a crude drawing of a bird of prey, daubed in yellow, with crimson claws and hooked beak.

  "Hawks," J.B. pronounced, "marking their turf."

  Dred's voice echoed from beneath their feet. "Not a good place to stay out after dark. Scalies creepy-crawl from rivers."

&nb
sp; THE FOOD WAS DIFFERENT kinds of fish and water creatures offered up in different ways. Dred got a fire going, connected to a ramshackle arrangement of old heating and drainage pipes. "Carries smoke a long way off," he boasted.

  "This your own place?" Krysty asked.

  "Yeah. Got three of mine. Plenty of others around the Hawks' turf for hide-ups."

  It looked as if it had once been a basement apart­ment, built with strong supporting pillars that had held it up when the house above came crashing down. It was about fifteen feet square, with only the natu­ral light filtering down from the open hole. Dred pointed, showing them a dented sheet of steel with a handle bolted to it.

  "Any fucker tries to get in, he's got to get through that. Me and the blaster hold him out."

  "You got another way out of this rat hole?" J.B. asked.

  "Sure. Hey, some of you wrinklies aren't so dou­ble-stupe. Behind fire you move that door and there's a wriggle up and out behind the next house."

  Ryan admired the confidence and self-sufficiency of the teenager. "How old are you, Dred?"

  "Old as my teeth and younger than my cock." Again there was a paroxysm of mute laughter as he slapped his thighs at his own joke.

  "Eighteen?" Ryan offered.

  Like a hand turning off a spilling faucet, the laughter stopped. "Yeah. Or seventeen or nineteen. Can count to twenty and then… Then you're an oldie."

  The food was in five separate containers. Most of them looked as if they'd once been old cooking pots, but none had a handle. One was split across the bot­tom, and liquid kept seeping out, hissing into the yellow flames.

  Doc was interested in what was being offered. "Might I ask what culinary delights you intend for us, my dear young fellow?"

  "You mean eats?"

  "Indeed I do, Dred."

  "This is shrimps," be said, stirring a mass of ge­latinous pink. "This is some eels, and this is some more eels. Call this thumb chewer, 'cause it's got big teeth on it."

  "And that?" Doc pointed at the largest can, which bubbled merrily and was giving off a truly original smell.