Seedling

by James Axler

  Krysty was exalted.

  Her mind and body combined into an almost su­pernatural demonstration of mutie power. She had never tested herself to the limit, but this was close. The valve resisted, locked tight by the passing ages.

  Metal squealed and the wheel started to move, a millimeter, then another.

  "Help us, Lord," Doc prayed.

  Behind him the shouting was swelling, and there came the sudden, sharp crack of a blaster. A gleam­ing dimple of raw metal appeared in the tank, a cou­ple of inches to the left of Krysty's head.

  Doc spun around, seeing that the scalies had spot­ted what was happening and were moving toward them in force. Ten or fifteen, shouting and waving their weapons.

  "Krysty," he said, blinking as he realized he wasn't even sure whether he'd spoken out loud or not. In case he hadn't, Doc decided to try again. "Krysty!"

  But she wasn't there.

  Her body stood at his side, its hands gripping the metal, twisting. Her knuckles were white, and the skin had peeled off the ends of two of the fingers under the unthinkable pressure. Her flaming hair was packed so tightly against her skull that it looked like a cap of crimson plastic. Her emerald eyes were open a nar­row slit, looking blankly ahead of her. "Krysty!"

  MILDRED STARTED AWAKE, conscious that the two men with her were both on their feet "What's happening?"

  "Something," Ryan said, from the pitch-dark.

  LESS THAN THIRTY SECONDS away from them, in the shadowy warehouse, everything was happening. The scalies were closer, barely fifty yards from the red­head and the decrepit old man. They'd only fired one more shot, then a guttural order had been coughed out. They were sufficiently well armed not to have to use their blasters.

  Doc was fumbling to pull out his swordstick, curs­ing under his breath as it snagged on his belt. Grip­ping it in his left hand, he drew the Le Mat from its hiding place with his right, thumbing back the ham­mer and readying himself. "Take some with us, eh?" he croaked.

  Krysty was still heaving on the wheel valve, find­ing it moving more and more easily. She didn't see the scalies or the rough brick wall or the massive metal tank. Her eyes were focused inward, and she saw only the smiling, gentle face of her mother.

  A few drops of clear liquid leaked from the faucet, then a trickle. And then a great gushing torrent.

  The screams began almost immediately afterward.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  DOC TRIED TO move Krysty out of the way, scared that she might slip into the flood of concentrated nitric acid. But she was still deep in thrall to Gaia's power and ignored him, continuing to pull with both hands at the red metal wheel, turning it until it moved no farther, jammed full open.

  "Krysty!" The old man finally charged at her, dropping his shoulder, hitting her under the ribs and knocking her loose.

  Krysty cried out in protest, but her legs shook and she suddenly sat down, head slumped on her chest, eyes shut.

  At least she was safe, for a time, out of the way of the river of acid. Doc turned back to see what was happening.

  "Oh, God…" he said to himself, holstering the Le Mat.

  Blasters weren't necessary now.

  The clear liquid, fuming as soon as it began to spread out, was running down the slight slope, fill­ing the dips and hollows, toward the fire and the line of chained prisoners. It foamed and frothed around the feet, ankles and knees of the group of scalies that had been charging forward.

  And they began to melt.

  There was a period of several long seconds when the muties froze, puzzled at what appeared to be wa­ter surging toward them, lapping at their boots. Then gray-brown tendrils, like smoke, came bubbling up from the surface of the liquid.

  There was a tiny splinter of a second when Doc al­most started to smile. There was something about the behavior of the scalies that reminded him of giving a hotfoot to a fellow student back at Harvard—the same startled expression and the hopping up and down and yelling out.

  Then, one by one, they began to fall. Doc watched them, the flickering light from the fires giving a de­monic hue to the deaths, making them even more macabre.

  The acid began by eating through their boots into their feet. As it gushed from the tank it grew deeper, corroding their pants, starting to blister the skin on their legs, through the skin to the flesh and through the flesh to the network of muscle, ligament and ten­dons.

  To the clean white bones.

  The first shouts were bewilderment, turning to pain, sliding up the scale to a hysterical, agonized scream of panic.

  The helpless, doomed scalies fell, kicking, splash­ing and flailing. But each part of them that came into contact with the concentrated acid began immedi­ately to disintegrate, vanishing, stripped away into a slurry of bloody gruel.

  "Oh, my dear God," the old man breathed. The fumes were choking, but it wasn't that bringing tears to his eyes. "Oh, the horror, the horror."

  THE NOISE WAS AMPLIFIED by the narrow passages. Where Ryan waited with J.B. and Mildred, the screams were deafening, rising louder and louder.

  "Something real bad!" the Armorer shouted. "Shall we go take a look?"

  Ryan nodded.

  He put his head around the end of the corridor, looking toward the source of the noise. As well as the noise, there was a strange smell drifting toward them.

  "What's…?"

  "My Lord," Mildred said. "That's acid. Maybe nitric acid."

  Within twenty yards the fumes were so thick and choking that they had to stop. "No good," Ryan panted. "Have to get back toward the bus terminal. Fresh air. Come on."

  "DOC?"

  Krysty's voice was weak, barely audible, but he heard it. He turned from his contemplation of the vast stillness of the warehouse.

  "I'm here, child."

  "We do it?"

  "Oh, yes." He sighed. "Indeed, we did it. How are you?"

  "Feel like an hour-old chick. Give me a hand up, will you?"

  He reached down to help, finding that he needed all of his strength to get her to her feet. She slumped and would have fallen again if he hadn't put an arm around her waist.

  "There."

  "Thanks. Gaia! The smell's dreadful. Where's all the scalies?"

  At the far, higher end the cooking fires still burned, their dying flames reflected in the sullen surface of the acid lake. The tank was drained, and only an occa­sional drop now spluttered from the nozzle of the faucet.

  "Most under that. Some escaped out the far side. I believe the majority of their prisoners got away, but they were chained, so I have some serious doubts as to their potential for ultimate survival. If there are more in this mutie army, then this will cause them considerable anger. We should get away and try to find Ryan and the others."

  "Can't walk too fast. What happened to the woman with the scars?"

  "Saw her grapple with a scalie, then the aqua fortis threw its veil of night across the place. Can't see her now."

  Krysty's boots dragged on the stone floor as Doc began to pull her toward the nearest exit, the one they'd been brought through. The light was now al­most gone, but he hoped his sense of direction might eventually get them reunited with Ryan, Mildred and J.B.

  But two factors combined to dash Doc's hopes. One was that his sense of direction in pitch-black, in­terwoven tunnels and corridors wasn't as good as he'd reckoned. The second was that Krysty's use of the power, as always, had weakened her to such an ex­tent that she had to rest. They had only been stum­bling along for about ten blind minutes when her legs completely gave way. Doc was able to lower her to the floor, kneeling by her.

  "Sorry. Can't go on any farther. Must sleep awhile, Doc."

  "That's fine my child. Let me sit down here, and you shall lay your sleepy head in my lap. Nowhere to go tonight, is there?"

  The old man realized he was talking to himself. The young woman was already fast asleep.

  In his rich, rounded voice Doc crooned a lullaby. Buried beneath the ruins of New York, D
oc Tanner ran his fingers through the mane of hair, feeling it al­most respond to his touch. And his mind wandered away, back through time, to the little daughter he'd hardly known. And who was now dead for well over a hundred years.

  "Sleep well, my dearest," he whispered. "Sleep well, my dear, dear Rachel. Sleep well."

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  THE CITY WAS silent. The air tasted fresh and clean, with just a faint flavor of woodsmoke. They still had a little food left from two days earlier, but that would soon be running out.

  Ryan stretched, bracing his shoulders. After a cold night, he invariably felt stiff, his old wounds and in­juries coming back to haunt him, each one with its whispered memories of pain.

  He brushed them to the back of his mind. "Time to be up and doing."

  J.B.'s eyes opened immediately. From hundreds of similar moments Ryan knew precisely what his old friend would do and in what order.

  The glasses first, unfolded from a pocket of his coat, followed by a swift check of all his weapons. Then he sat up. "Nothing?"

  "Not a sight and not a sound."

  Mildred awakened and stretched, her mouth gap­ing open in a huge yawn. "God, it's freezing. Any sign of Krysty or Doc? Stupid question. Sorry, not properly awake yet."

  "We'll have a bite of dried meat, then go look," Ryan said.

  DOC HAD BEEN DREAMING. The visions of the night were rarely about the present or the immediate past. Occasionally he had black nightmares about the pe­riod in the Darks when he had been a plaything for Jordan Teague, baron of Mocsin, and his skull-faced sec boss, Cort Strasser.

  Mostly his dreams were of the late 1890s, sum­mery dreams of picnics with Emily and the two chil­dren, Rachel, toddling in her frills and petticoats, and little Jolyon, lying on a blanket, kicking his chubby legs.

  But the idyllic dreams were almost always shad­owed by clouds across the sun, or the faint, menac­ing rumble of distant thunder.

  Last night they'd been on a sloping, shingled beach. Jolyon had been close to the edge of the rip­pling waves, with Rachel tending him. Doc himself had been sitting up, smoking a pipe, Emily's head in his lap, her long hair streaming over his thighs. Sud­denly he'd seen triangular fins cutting the water, heading toward the beach. The notches in the dor­sals revealed that they were a pod of killer whales, driving toward the two little figures on the beach. He'd wanted to run to pull them to safety, but his wife's head was heavy and he didn't like to disturb her sleep.

  He'd awakened, sweating and gasping, just as one of the creatures had lunged from the waves, sur­rounded by a surging swell of foaming green and sil­ver.

  Krysty's eyes were open, looking up at him from his lap. "Bad dream, Doc?"

  "Not one of the very best. But how are you this fine morning?"

  "Better. My head feels as though it's been rolled between a couple of millstones. That'll pass."

  The place where they'd spent the night was now il­luminated by the first, gentle light of dawn. Doc had dozed, waking frequently, straining his hearing for any warning of the scalies' return. But all he'd heard had been the rustling of rats, one of the most com­mon nighttime noises in Deathlands.

  "I think we should move if you feel strong enough. We don't want our reptilian friends of yesternight to find us here."

  "Sure." With a visible effort Krysty stood, helped by Doc's hand. She leaned for a few moments against the chipped brick wall, taking slow breaths. "Every time I use the power I tell myself I'll never, ever do it again. Makes you feel like triple-shit."

  "STILL SMELL THE FUMES from the acid or whatever the chemical was," Mildred said.

  Ryan was leading the way through the maze. "I got a feeling it has to be linked with Krysty and Doc. Someway."

  "No movement of those scalie patrols this morn­ing." J.B. looked behind them. "I reckon that could be Doc and Krysty, as well."

  Neither of them actually put into words the fear that their friends could very possibly be dead.

  THOUGH STILL WEAKENED, Krysty was recovering fast.

  As they made their way along dappled corridors, trying to track the route toward the old bus terminal, she had to stop every few minutes, squatting, hands on knees. But each time she was able to go that much farther between rests.

  It was during the fourth or fifth such break that she suddenly looked up, head to one side as though she were listening to the tiny sound of a far-off bell.

  Doc recognized the pose. "What can you hear, my young friend?"

  There was a point close ahead of them where the passage forked into a T-junction.

  "Something both ways. Not scalies. Much too quiet. To the right there's… I can feel pain in that direction. The other way, left, it could be Ryan and the others."

  It was.

  THE EMOTION AT THEIR REUNION was intense, but quickly over. Ryan, still holding Krysty's hand, summed it up. "Tell us about it later. And we'll have later for some close times. But for now we can get the ace on the line out of here. Back north. Cross the river and down into the gateway. And gone."

  "I'll drink to that." Doc beamed. "I fear New York is no longer the toddling town it once was. Best I leave it to my memories."

  "You're right, Doc." Mildred gave Krysty another hug. "So great to see you again. We thought we wouldn't."

  "Me, too. Tell you all about it on the way back to the redoubt."

  "No scalies around, lover?" Ryan asked.

  "Not one. Though there was something a little ways back."

  "What?"

  Krysty took her hand from Ryan's. "Let me just listen a moment. Quiet, everyone. Real quiet."

  There was an infinite stillness in the concrete tomb. Ryan strained his hearing, but all he could catch was the blood pounding through the narrow thorough­fares of his skull.

  Krysty's startlingly green eyes snapped open. "Yes. Something."

  "Danger?" Ryan asked.

  She shook her head. "No. Pain. Someone suffer­ing and ill. Very sick. Close to passing over to the other side. That way." She pointed in the direction they'd come from.

  "Near?" Ryan trusted Krysty's mutie skills im­plicitly. She'd never guess at anything unless she felt sure.

  "Underground you can't be certain. But, yeah, she's not far from here."

  "She?" J.B. said. "You sure it's a woman out there?"

  "Course. Come on."

  THEY FOUND HER just where Krysty had predicted, up the other corridor off the T-junction.

  She sat with her back against the stone wall, knees drawn toward her chest. Her face was dust-white, the pattern of scars standing out even more clearly, a random design of raised weals. The metal locket around her neck glistened faintly in the dim light.

  The five friends stood in a loose half circle around her.

  "She gone?" Krysty asked.

  "Breathing." J.B. stooped closer. "But only just."

  "Let me." Mildred knelt and peered at the woman. She took her wrist between finger and thumb, look­ing into the distance as she counted to herself. "Very low."

  "The cold?" Ryan offered.

  "Maybe."

  Doc coughed. "Forgive an elderly man's interrup­tion, but it appears from where I'm standing that the poor woman is sitting in the middle of a pool of dry­ing blood."

  Mildred gently unfolded the arms from across the chest and stomach. "Oh, shit," she said quietly.

  "What?" Krysty took a half step to the side so that she could see over Mildred's shoulders. "Oh."

  Mildred straightened, and they were all able to see what had happened.

  The dying woman had been knifed, presumably by one of the scalie guards, perhaps as she tried to es­cape. Somehow she'd managed to get away from the acid-flooded warehouse. The bloody sores on her knees told their own story of how she'd gotten as far as she had.

  The knife had been thrust in with a ferocious an­ger, a little to the left, then drawn across and twisted. In among the sodden clothes, crusted with congeal­ing, clotted blood, they could all see the thin loop
s and twists of intestines tumbled into her lap.

  "Least the rats didn't find her during the night," J.B. commented.

  "I don't think she'd have known much about it if they had," Mildred replied. "Whatever bad times she's had in her life are nearly finished."

  "Should I end it for her?" Ryan asked, his hand slipping to the hilt of his panga.

  At the sound of his voice the woman's eyes opened. For several long heartbeats she gazed blindly into space, not focusing on anything. Then she moved her head and her eyes locked on Ryan's face.

  Her lips moved, but no sound came out. Her tongue tried desperately to moisten her cracked lips. Krysty had a small container of water, and she knelt quickly and splashed a little into the palm of her hand, offering it to the woman. She lapped at it, then coughed, the breath wheezing in her chest.

  But her eyes never left Ryan.

  "You," she finally whispered.

  "What is it you want?" he asked, feeling an al­most supernatural wonder at what was possibly keeping her alive with her guts spilled out.

  "Rona."

  "What?"

  Doc looked at Mildred. "That was the name she said before." He explained to the others. "She gave us food when the scalies had us. She didn't make sense. About wanting to find you, Ryan, my dear fellow. But wouldn't say why."

  "Look," Krysty breathed. "Her hand."

  It was spidering up her chest, with a life of its own, to her throat. It stopped and gripped the square metal pendant. "Take," she said, her eyes burning into Ryan's good one.

  "This?" He touched it with his fingers. A nod of the head, slow and painful, answered him. He care­fully pulled it up, wincing as he realized it was stuck to her with dried blood. He peeled it loose and over the tangled gray hair.

  "Open."

  He turned it in his hand. The workmanship re­minded him vaguely of silver he'd seen down in the Southwest. Indian crafts. For a moment he couldn't see how to get inside it.