Seedling

by James Axler

  "And your tits," Boss York ordered. "Harve, come up here and take the tiller."

  Retha peeled off her sweater and the ancient T-shirt underneath. The cold wind made the nipples on her small breasts harden. Ryan looked the other way, out across the water toward the shore of Mattan.

  One of the great lessons the Trader had taught him was that you didn't interfere in other people's busi­ness unless you had to. Right now there were two op­tions. One was to ignore what was going to happen to Retha and make the ferry crossing safely. It was ob­vious the girl was used to this.

  The second option was to take on more than a dozen men on a raft in the middle of a wide river. Ryan was fairly confident in his own ability as a swimmer, but he wasn't sure about the others. The second option became even less attractive as he glimpsed a triangular fin cut the surface only a hun­dred yards away from them.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan was aware of the pale, dirt-streaked body of the girl, kneeling submis­sively in front of the huge man. Her mouth opened and she lifted her hands as if in prayer. Boss York pushed his hips forward at her face.

  "Use your teeth and I'll snap your fucking neck," he growled.

  The oars rose and fell, moving in a ragged rhythm, carrying them south and west away from the Bronx. Nobody spoke.

  The man was breathing harder and faster, finally gasping out his satisfaction. Retha coughed and choked, but he grabbed her by the neck. "Don't spit it out, bitch."

  Ryan could feel his own pulse starting to beat fas­ter, anger closing down his mind to what was sensi­ble and what was crassly stupid.

  "Who's next? Come on boys. Wet the deck and pass it around! Best go double and triple. Slut'll take what we give her."

  Retha knelt in the bottom of the raft, wiping her mouth. Boss York replaced the man at the tiller, who made his way toward the girl, unzipping his pants as he went. One of the others shipped his oar and started back.

  "Ryan," Krysty said, her voice shaking with emo­tion.

  "No," he whispered in a voice strung so tight that he hardly recognized it.

  The two members of the York family started in on the girl, both encouraging the other, betting jack on who came first.

  Ryan suddenly realized that Boss York was delib­erately steering a tacking course, running the raft in a series of lateral cuts, making their journey three times the length it needed to be.

  "How come you aren't going straight?" he called.

  "How come you old outies don't shut your triple-stupe mouths?" The witty riposte brought bellows of laughter from the crew.

  "Gotta go with the current, outie!" one of the children shouted.

  "But you're right, One-eye. It's taking a long time. Hard work with all you bastards on here. Too fuck­ing many. Think we'll have to up the price some."

  Dred's face was like wind-carved bone. "We done a deal, Boss," he protested.

  "That was then and this is now."

  "What's the—" Dred began.

  "Triple price, friends. Redhead slut and black slut. Here and now."

  "No," Ryan stated flatly.

  Chapter Twelve

  DRED SAT ON one of the oil drums, head between his legs, a trickle of vomit hanging from his open mouth. There was arterial blood splashed all over his pale face, soaked into his jacket, where one of the York boys had died on top of him. On the back of his jacket, invisible to him, was a gray splatter of brain tissue, speckled with splinters of bright white skull.

  Every living person on the drifting raft was dap­pled with crimson. The water that sloshed around under the thwarts was clotted and murky with all the spilled blood.

  Retha was being helped into her wet clothes by Mildred, who tried to wipe her clean of the worst of the shambles.

  The bodies were gone, all bobbing in the Harlem River, mostly floating facedown, trailing out behind the raft like dejected flotsam. Already the scavengers were there, scenting rich pickings. Two of the dreaded triangular fins were circling the corpses, and a third was slicing through the river from the north.

  "Did you have to chill the children?" Mildred asked.

  Ryan glanced across at her. He was busy reloading the G-12, fishing in the deep pockets of his jacket for more of the caseless rounds to fill the 50-shot maga­zine.

  "Don't be a stupe."

  "But they were little children," she protested. "You could have… neutralized them."

  "Mildred, we did neutralize them. Permanently. They were part of the bloody gang. They lived with them and they died with them. And now they're in the river with them."

  The black woman stood up, the discolored water sloshing around her ankles. "In another place, Ryan Cawdor, you might have been a real nice guy. But not in Deathlands."

  He nodded. "Maybe. Nice guys, like you call them, in Deathlands don't get to be second, lady. They get to be fucking dead."

  J.B. was balancing on the side of the raft, method­ically cleaning and reloading his 5.6 mm pistol. He looked at Mildred, his voice quiet, barely audible above the lapping waves. "You're in shock. You just saw a mess of people get shifted from the living mode into the chilled mode. All happened so fast you could have held a single breath while it went down. We all understand that, Mildred."

  Her eyes opened wide, staring fixedly at the slight figure of the Armorer. "I'm not in shock, you—" She stopped speaking and nodded slowly. "All right, you pint-size bastard. Maybe I am in shock. But it still doesn't make it right to butcher children."

  J.B. holstered his blaster. "Tell you something, Mildred. When I rode with Trader— Around about the time we had that mess up in Towse, Ryan. Re­member it?"

  There was a flash in Ryan's memory of a woman with a feral scent of rutting lust, Sharona, eyes of palest lilac. Sharona Carson was a killer born who'd coupled with Ryan and then walked away, daring him to shoot her in the back. She'd kicked a big chopped Harley two-wheel wag into life and rode off into a smoke-crusted future.

  "I remember it."

  J.B. continued, eyes blank behind the glittering lenses of his spectacles. "About five…six months after that. Near Death Valley. We got ambushed by some desert muties. Hit a water party. Got Otis in the chest. Never the same after it. Chilled Peachy, the re­lief driver. Trader went after them and we hit the camp. Ragged-assed bunch of triple-poors."

  Ryan checked the action on the stubby gray auto­matic rifle, then slung it over his shoulders. Every­one on the raft was now listening to the quiet voice of the Armorer. Ryan could recall the scene. The camp had been tattered canvas near the end of a dry draw. Lot of dogs. It hadn't been much of a firefight.

  "It wasn't a clean-kill takeout. Muddle with women screaming and men running around with arms hanging off. Trader's rules meant take them all out. So we did." He coughed and wiped a smear of blood from his cheek. "After it was done, we checked out the camp. Giardino had that Enfield support weapon, Ryan. He found this toddler—could've been around three years old—wrapped in a pile of stinking blan­kets. Giardino picked it up and walked outside with it. Stood there and called to Trader what he'd found."

  It was one of the longest speeches Ryan had ever heard J.B. make. Behind the drifting raft most of the corpses of the York tribe had vanished. A flock of screeching, iron-billed gulls circled low over the oily water where the tangle of bodies had been.

  "Go on," Mildred prompted, almost in a whisper.

  "Not much more to tell. Brat had an implo-gren buckled to its belly. Pulled the pin. Giardino never knew what hit him. Him and the mutie kid kind of vanished into the sucking detonation of the gren. Found Giardino's legs and some of his left arm. Part of his skull landed in a cooking fire fifty yards away."

  Ryan could search his memory banks and almost taste the sharp bitterness that an implo-gren left be­hind it. And the other scent of scorched meat. The pair of legs had bizarrely balanced for several sec­onds before they'd folded limply in on themselves.

  "That's why-"

  Mildred finished the sentence for him. "Why we
chill the children, as well. Thanks, J.B. I still find it abhorrent, but at least it makes a kind of deadly sense."

  Retha seemed locked into deeper shock. Mildred had managed to clean her up some, swilling off most of the welter of blood that had covered her when Ryan and the others had opened up the murderous tattoo. But the girl still hadn't spoken, sitting quietly on one of the thwarts, head down, staring at her feet in the long rubber boots.

  Dred was perking up, punching his right fist into the palm of his left hand, cursing in a monotone. "Wiped the fuckers. All the fucking Yorks gone. We got the raft. Could take their business with your blasters. Take the ville and send every other gang out the end of the fucking pier."

  Krysty moved to stand by Ryan. "What now, lover? Head for Mattan?"

  "Why not? We paid some of the fare, and nobody'll ask us for any extra. Hide this boat and then use it when we want to get back into the gate­way."

  "Who was the woman with the lilac eyes?"

  "What?" His eyes opened wider with surprise. "How d'you know?"

  "Caught a strong flash of her when J.B. was opening up with his story of Towse."

  "Woman I knew."

  "Knew, lover?"

  "We made it two or three times. I can't remember. Long time ago."

  Doc was near them, struggling to complete the delicate process of reloading the old Le Mat pistol on the pitching craft. He caught the tail end of the con­versation and grinned. "It was in another country. And, beside, the bitch is dead."

  "That one of your quotes, Doc?" Ryan asked, ea­ger to shift the conversation away from Sharona Carson.

  "A quote?" Doc replied. "Was it, my dear boy? Perhaps, perhaps."

  Once everyone had cleaned themselves up, or in the case of the teenage girl, been cleaned up, there was a general agreement that they should persist on their way. They'd cross the Harlem River and find some­where to stash the stolen raft, then investigate what remained of old Manhattan.

  Doc made another of his cackling, runic jokes. "And the Bronx and Staten Island, too," he snig­gered.

  Only Mildred laughed.

  Chapter Thirteen

  IT TOOK SOME TIME to master the clumsy raft. Ryan took the tiller, trying to keep the rounded prow headed roughly toward the distant shore without striking any of the rusting and protruding piles of tangled iron.

  Doc and Krysty hefted the oars on the starboard side, while Dred and Mildred rowed on the port side. J.B. stood in the bow, like an antique figure of a harpooner, guiding Ryan away from the dangers.

  Retha sat still and silent.

  Before risking to take the raft close to the southern bank of the river, Ryan spent a quarter hour trying to master the eccentric steering. It had occurred to him that they might possibly need to make a swift get­away at some point, and if they floundered in help­less circles they'd be easy meat.

  But he was eventually satisfied.

  "Heading in over there," he shouted to J.B., pointing to a narrow inlet between two tumbled buildings.

  The slow current had carried them downriver to­ward the piles of what had once been a massive bridge. If they'd had access to a hundred-year-old map, they'd have known that it had been called the Triborough Bridge, running from Randalls Island Park on the east side to join Harlem River Drive.

  As it was, the raft grounded gently on Manhattan Island close to where the old Second Avenue

  inter­sected with 128th Street

  .

  "All ashore that's going ashore," Doc called. "And watch out for hostile natives!"

  "Amen to that," Mildred agreed.

  THE MUDDY SHORE DIDN'T show any tracks, human or mutie. Working together, they managed to drag the cumbersome raft up and out of sight, using some driftwood to cover it.

  Retha finally began to shake herself out of her shocked misery and helped.

  All around them stretched a limitless, devastated wasteland—wrecked buildings and decayed road­ways, the occasional heap of rusted metal that had once been an automobile. There was no sign of life, in any direction.

  "Now what?" Krysty asked.

  "You feel anything?"

  She shook her head slowly. "Nothing, lover. But… I'm not sure."

  Ryan pressed her. "Come on, what's that mean? Can you see danger or not?"

  She rubbed her hands together. "That's a cold wind. Bites at the skin. No. I don't feel anything close. But there's a sort of strong, all-round feeling of… like a blanket crawling with fleas." She sniffed. "I don't know. There aren't the right words for it, lover. Just that this feels like one of the most danger­ous places we've ever been."

  "Then we'll take care."

  Krysty smiled at Ryan, and he felt a burst of over­whelming love for her. "We always do take care, lover."

  "COULD DO WITH SOMETHING to eat," J.B. said. "Anything around here?"

  Dred was staring up at the sky, head thrown back, the corded muscles of his scrawny neck standing out like spun twine. "What?"

  "Food," the Armorer said, with a deceptively gentle calm.

  "Where?"

  "Pay attention, son. Where's a good place to get some food?"

  "Food's hard," he replied.

  "Food's always hard, Dred," Ryan said. "This is your ville. Tell us where to go and what to do."

  The boy ran his fingers through the matted dread­locks, looking back across the river to his own turf. It was Retha who answered the question.

  "Not far from the big park. Eateries there, by where the dry lake is."

  "Central Park and the Reservoir," Mildred ex­plained. "Only a mile or so from here. Maybe two miles. Be there before noon."

  It took them well over two hours to cover that mile and a half.

  THE CLOUDS HAD GATHERED from over the Jersey swamps, bringing a light drizzle that smeared the gray streets, visibility dropped, and the temperature slith­ered toward uncomfortable. Ryan led the way, keep­ing the group in a tight patrol formation.

  J.B. brought up the rear, the brim of his beloved fedora keeping the light rain off his glasses. Doc was next to last, the ferrule of his swordstick rapping a smart beat on the highway. Retha and Mildred walked just in front of him. Krysty was third in line, with Dred a half-dozen paces ahead.

  "Any dangers here?" Ryan asked the boy after they'd moved ten blocks south and a couple west.

  "Always is danger in Mattan, Ryan. But they won't likely attack a gang like us with such extreme blast­ers."

  As they made their way through the ville, Ryan concluded that clusters of missiles must have been responsible for such devastation. Even one of the big ones from the space programs wouldn't have taken out such a large urban area. The rad counters all showed clean and green, so it hadn't been anything dirty. And the damage told it sure as shit hadn't been caused by any neutron-based weapons.

  What the explosions had done was to leave a great space ahead of them. Here and there jagged peaks of masonry stood up, rainwater trickling off in dia­mond rivulets. But there was nothing else.

  Ryan held up his hand and the group stopped. "Dred?"

  "Yeah. I been here before. Fucking dead streets. Have to go way around."

  "Why not straight across?" Mildred suggested.

  "Holes. All sorts of big holes. Can't see some of them. Mutie rats live in there, bigger than dogs. And there's wet places. Deep wet places you go down and you don't come up."

  The woman nodded, wiping rain off her face. "Sure thing, Dred. You've convinced me."

  "What a foul and noisome place is this." Doc sighed. "The Big Apple finally turned rotten."

  Ryan allowed the boy to lead the way around the fringes of the totally ruined area. It involved thread­ing back north, then east, then west, passing the 116th Lexington subway stop. The entrance gaped open, and they could smell the foul stench of rotting meat.

  Finger on the trigger of his AK-47, Dred hurried them past the dark hole. No one bothered to ask what it was that dwelled down there.

  As they neared the northern edge of C
entral Park, they began to see more signs of life.

  "Newyork's about the biggest ville I've ever been in," Ryan said. "Keep seeing these shadows, danc­ing around right at the edge of seeing, moving from pile of stone to heap of brick. Never there when you turn and look straight at them."

  "I thought there'd be a lot of bodies still around," Krysty observed. "Millions died here. Millions. Where'd all the bones go?"

  Retha heard the question. "Plenty still under the dirt."

  Krysty nodded, and droplets of water cascaded off her dazzling crimson curls. "Think the rain's stop­ping. Yeah, I understand about lots of them being under the wreckage. But there must've been others."

  Retha smiled slyly, putting her fingers to her thin lips and making the unmistakable gestures of eating.

  "Oh, Gaia!" Krysty closed her eyes for a mo­ment. "Wish I'd never asked."

  THEY COULD ALL SMELL roasting meat and baking bread.

  "What do we pay with?" Ryan asked. "And don't even think about the sort of jack that went down on the boat!"

  Dred giggled. "Not like that. Straight barter. Ammo's real good. I got me some old rounds for a nine mill. Stole them a year ago. Most don't fire, but they trade real good."

  His busy fingers rattled them in his pocket, the metal jackets tinkling.

  They walked, tight-grouped, along a trodden path, trampled into the mud. Now, from all directions they could see other people, most moving south toward the source of the scent of food. A few came back north, eyes averted from the heavily armed strangers. Some carried black garbage bags, hugged to their chests. Several wore small blasters in their belts and all hefted some kind of blade. Most were shrouded in tattered pants and patched cloaks. Few seemed to be more than twenty years old.

  "Garden up there." Retha pointed past some higher ground to their left. "Found a yellow flower there once."

  Just off the track in front of them lay the corpse of a young woman, throat opened, the pool of blood already black and scaled. Nobody took any notice of the body, stepping around or over it.