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Ryan began to haul the raft onto the beach. It took long minutes for the two exhausted men to get the raft past the waterline and against the cliff. They piled seaweed on top to camouflage it, but most things in nature weren’t square and covered with weed.
“A most suspicious lump,” Doc opined.
“Check your powder.” Ryan unslung his Steyr longblaster.
Doc drew his LeMat revolver from the waxed canvas pouch he kept inside his jacket and made sure his powder was still dry. “How shall we proceed?”
“Talking with this Barat is a gamble, but we need to find out the cycle on the mat-trans. He might know it. We bluff our way in and bluff our way out and make him think it’s to his advantage to help us.” Ryan gave Doc a measuring look. “You better be at your baronial best.”
Doc gave Ryan a sweeping bow in return and doffed his nonexistent hat. “Baron Theophilus Algernon Tanner, shipwrecked royalty, at your service.”
“You don’t serve, Doc. You give orders.”
“Ah.” Doc snapped his fingers at Ryan imperiously. “You, knave! Attend me.”
“Better.”
They moved down the beach. The smaller island had been a rambling affair of hills and dunes. The land here was more rough-hewn. The beach was a thin strip of sand abutting tall and jagged cliffs. They followed the strand westward for several miles toward the ville. Twice they saw the gray shadows of masted ships in the fog. Buoys clanked to mark the path through the rock-strewed channel as they got close to the wharf. Ryan stopped. Doc started as his companion put a hand to his chest. “What? Is there—”
Ryan put a finger to his lips and then pointed. The black mouth of a cave gaped out of a jumble of rocks at the base of the cliff. Ryan examined the sand. Seaweed and barnacles on the rocks around the cave mouth indicated the water reached right up during high tide, and it had erased any footprints or signs of passage. Ryan stared at the cave and knew without a doubt he was being watched.
Doc shivered and Ryan knew the old man felt it, too. Doc took comfort in Shakespeare. “‘By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.’”
“Something’s in that cave, all right,” Ryan agreed. “And it’s got bastard bad intentions.”
The click-click-clack of Doc’s ancient single-action blaster seemed very loud even over the boom of the surf. It made a final click as he set the hammer to fire the shotgun barrel. “Hold fire, Doc,” Ryan said. “You shoot, the whole ville will hear it.” Ryan’s eye narrowed. “And whatever’s in there isn’t raising a ruckus.”
“You know?” Doc shivered again. “I almost wish it were.”
Ryan and Doc were both getting the same vibe. They had both been to terrible places where terrible things had happened. There were places in the Deathlands imprinted with the horrors they had witnessed that almost had a palpable aura of their own. Almost a life of their own. The cave was a very bad place, and there was something very bad inside it. That something was watching them now with a very cold will to chill them.
“Shall we double back?” Doc asked quietly. “Perhaps there is another way inland, or perhaps we might find a scaleable spot along the cliffs.”
Ryan felt the chiller in the dark, and he knew it was feeling him, too. He really didn’t want to walk past that cave, but neither did he want to go swimming again. He was reminded of how insistent Ago had been about not coming to the island at night. He thought of Roque and his crew hiding from the sun beneath wide hats, long coats and smoked lenses. “I don’t think it’s coming out.” Ryan shook his head. “I don’t think it can. At least not until nightfall.”
“Then let us proceed as quickly as possible while the day is still ahead of us.” Doc gave the cave another leery look. “One at a time, or together?”
Ryan hefted the Steyr. “I’ll cover you. Don’t shoot unless something actually comes out.”
“Indeed.” Doc drew his sword stick. Interminable moments passed as he crept warily down the little strip of sand. At this bend in the beach there was barely more than a scant ten yards between the cave mouth and the sea. Ryan kept his crosshairs on the cave but whatever lurked within was staying back. Doc almost sagged with relief as he crossed out of the cave’s line of sight. He sheathed his sword and knelt behind a boulder, taking his LeMat in a firm, two-handed hold to cover the cave. “I am ready.”
There was no point in creeping. Both Ryan and the lurker knew the other was there. Ryan strode down the beach as though he owned it, daring the chiller in the dark to do something about it.
“Ryan!” Doc shouted.
The rock was the size of Ryan’s head. It flew out of the cave as if it had been thrown by a catapult. Ryan dived for the sand. The rock ruffled his hair in passing and smashed into the surf with a tremendous splash. The one-eyed tucked into a roll and his hand snaked out to snatch up a rock the size of a hen’s egg. He rose and flung his stone dead center for the cave mouth like he was trying to hit the last train west. He was rewarded by the meaty thud of rock meeting flesh. He’d hoped to be rewarded with a cry of pain or at least an outraged roar. What he felt were eyes burning into his back as he ran out the line of fire. Ryan knew as long as he stayed on this island he had an enemy, and he knew if he was still here by nightfall that the cold-heart lurking in the dark was going to come looking.
Before it was over someone was going to take that train.
“THEY’RE IN THE VENTILATION ducts,” J.B. said.
Krysty looked up. She had been dozing, but as she listened she could hear the muffled thumps and scrapes of stickies squirming their way through the ducts. “How come they didn’t do that before?”
“Dunno,” J.B. said. “Nobody’s been here in a long while. Mebbe this generation never learned.”
Krysty was reminded of the piles of bones, cracked for their marrow and scattered throughout the corridors. “They’re learning now.”
J.B. was reminded of the stickies trying to extrude themselves through the three-inch gap between the steel door and the wall. He glanced at the ventilation grills in the room, which had been punched out from the inside long ago. The redoubt was a predark military facility. It wouldn’t have air ducts a spy or saboteur could crawl through. The openings were mere twelve-by-six-inch rectangles. The redoubts were wonders of engineering, but the twentieth-century architects hadn’t built with assaulting stickies in mind. In his mind’s eye J.B. could imagine the stickies in the ducts, dislocating their bones and pulling themselves along with sluglike muscular contractions anchored by their suction-cupped fingers.
It wasn’t a good image.
Krysty filled her hands with blaster and blade. “What’s the plan, J.B.?”
“Can’t come through the ducts more than one at a time.” J.B. pushed off his scattergun’s safety. “Mebbe we chill the ones in front. Make a pile of them. That’ll confuse them.”
“They’ll figure to just push them forward.”
“Until they do, that’s the plan.” The Armorer nodded. “Go check the door.”
Krysty walked out into the hall. “Gaia!”
A stickie was halfway through the opening. Pushing past the unyielding steel had turned its skull into a stepped-on melon. That didn’t seem to be hindering its progress. The stickie’s flattened chest snapped and crackled and popped back into place as its torso rein-flated. Its hips were posing something of a problem, but the grotesque crunching and grinding noises as it pulled its pelvis against the gap implied it was making progress.
Krysty’s blaster cracked once and chilled it through the skull. The crunching and grinding turned to snapping and tearing as its brethren devoured its lower half in a frenzy to get to the opening. “J.B.!” Krysty called. “They can get through the door!”
J.B. took a knee beside one of the ventilation ducts, removed his survival flashlight and gave the generator handle a few cranks before shining it down the shaft. He scowled. There it was, a stickie, one hell of a lot closer than he would have liked. Its squeezed-out-of-shape skull was impossibly jammed against its outstretched arm in the tiny space. Nonetheless, it splayed out its suckered fingers and its rubbery muscles squirmed beneath its flesh, conspiring to pull it forward a few more inches. J.B. spit in disgust. “Dark night.”
He fired his M-4000 and filled the duct with buck. J.B. racked a fresh round into his scattergun and peered down the shaft again. The stickie was mostly a gooey mess now. J.B. rose and walked over to the other duct. One peek showed him the same situation. The stickie worming its way up the other duct blinked into the glare of J.B.’s flashlight before resuming its creeping progress. J.B. let fly with another buckshot blast that obliterated the stickie’s hand, arm and face. For the barest of seconds there was a moment of blessed silence.
The shattered stickie’s jammed-up corpse jerked a little and J.B. heard the crunch of bones as the mutie behind began chewing its way toward him through its friend from the toes up.
Krysty walked in reloading the round she had spent in the hallway. “Given time, they can get through that door.”
“Heard you.” He glanced up as the thumping and bumping in the ceiling continued and pondered the unpleasant idea of the stickies ripping their way out of the ducts and falling upon him and Krysty through the light fixtures.
“How are we on chron, again?” Krysty asked wearily. She already knew, but she vainly hoped that somehow J.B. or maybe even Gaia herself would give her a happier answer.
J.B. looked at the mat-trans comp unhappily as she shucked fresh shells past the loading gate of his blaster. “Two more days.”
Chapter Six
Ryan and Doc examined the ville through their optics. “This ville is old,” Doc said. “Plainly it was already old in my time. The cobblestone streets are original.” They scanned the steep streets and crowded narrow buildings. “Almost all the modern construction, buildings from Mildred’s time, have rotted away. Like the church on the sister isle, it is the ancient and solid construction that has survived. It is Mediterranean in style, in keeping with their presumed Portuguese forebears. Everything fashioned post the apocalypse is plank-and-beam or dry-mortared stone. Clearly the present generation has not the skill to copy the ancient buildings.”
Ryan ran his eye appraisingly over the ville. Far too many people in the Deathlands were still feasting on the bones of Mildred’s predark time. This island appeared to have escaped skydark and transitioned fairly smoothly. Ryan grimaced and considered the chill-pale Roque and his crew. He noted the heavy iron-bound doors of all the houses. None that he saw had first-floor windows, the lower windows of those of older construction were either bricked up or barred, and that brought his thoughts back to whatever it was that awaited the night in the cave behind them. The island hadn’t escaped skydark entirely.
Not by a long shot.
Men in long coats and wide hats moved about on the streets. Some few more were engaged in activities on the dock. Others Ryan assumed to be women wore equally dark-hooded robes and veils. A clutch of them were busy down on the beach harvesting buckets of shellfish from the rocks.
“And in what fashion should the Grand Turk and his illustrious vagabond enter upon the stage?” Doc asked.
Ryan simply stared.
“How shall we…make our play?” Doc tried.
Ryan had been giving that some thought. “What you said this morning. Shipwrecked royalty. It’s not bad. We tell them we went down in the storm. Since they lost Roque, they might buy it. With your fancy talk and Latin you might convince them you’re somebody to be reckoned with. Try to make some discreet inquiries about the mat-trans.”
“And you?”
“I’m your right hand. I’ll just stand around and look mean. We haven’t seen much in the way of blasters or sec men. Tell them there were two more ships with us, and if they didn’t go down they’re looking for us, and tell them they’re big. If they think you got a few dozen guys like me looking for you, that might keep them honest. You? Be charming. Be imperious. Be a baron. Don’t bastard it up.”
“Decorus Imperiosus Rex, so shall I be,” Doc assured him.
“Let’s get fed.”
They emerged from their hide among the boulders. The strand opened up to a decent stretch of beach around the harbor. Doc drew himself up to his full height and spun his cane jauntily as he walked down the sand. The women bolted erect from their labors to reveal veiled faces and smoked lenses. They made suitable sounds of alarm and then hiked up their robes with gloved hands as they scuttled toward the pier. Ryan kept his Steyr at port arms. Doc wasn’t exactly acting like a baron, but to his credit he didn’t appear to be afraid of anything. The men on the docks and boats drew knives and clutched at gaffs. Others ran full-tilt into the ville shouting. Ryan and Doc ignored them all and mounted the stone steps that descended between the ville and the sand. The area had a fountain and formed a bit of a ville square before the twisting streets wound up into the steep hillsides.
A church bell began ringing in alarm.
Doc stopped and struck a pose with one fist on his hip and the other on his cane. He made an imperious gesture with his hand. Ryan bellowed up at the ville. “Baron Theophilus Algernon Tanner seeks words with the baron of this island!” The cliffs on either side of the harbor gave his voice a nice echo. Doc whispered in Latin.
Ryan roared out, and punctuated it with a full auto burst from his blaster into the air. “Baron Theophilus Algernon Tanner peto lacuna per Baron ilei Insula!”
A phalanx of men in black came charging down the cobblestones. The man in the lead had some kind of assault blaster. The five men behind him had long double-barrel blasters, apparently homegrown, and probably black powder. The street behind them began to fill with men carrying single-barrel blasters, axes, shovels, sledges and anything else that was heavy or bladed.
Doc looked utterly unimpressed. Ryan took two steps forward to interpose himself between Doc and the mob and arranged his scarred features into their hardest look. His body language radiated that very little was keeping him in check from chilling them all. The leading man was tall and whip-thin. A sparse beard and mustache were visible beneath the shadow of his broad hat. He had a predark blaster in an open holster on his belt. As he halted, so did his men and the mob behind them. Clearly there was fear. Ryan detected the people here weren’t used to being surprised. It seemed certain they were used to occasional visitors from the mat-trans and perhaps spying a sail upon the sea. They weren’t expecting company dropping out of nowhere on their doorstep.
“I heard.” The leader spoke. Ryan was reminded of the accents when he had been to Amazonia. “You…speak English?”
“You.” Doc snapped his fingers. “Your name.”
“Jorge-Teo.” The man came an inch from snapping to attention. “Constable Jorge-Teo.”
Doc waved a dismissing hand. “Show us to Baron Barat.”
Ryan’s stomach tightened. Doc was already blowing it.
Ryan could hear Jorge-Teo’s eyes widening behind his dark glasses. “You…know the baron?”
Doc peered down his nose from his six-foot, four-inch height and recovered nicely. His voice dropped an intolerant octave. “We are aware of him.”
“Will you join me in my office?”
“We will.” Doc turned his eye upon the crowd and raised an eyebrow. The constable began shouting and the ville folk turned from mob to gawkers as they moved to either side of the street. Constable Jorge-Teo’s men made a move to arrange themselves in escort around Doc. Ryan stopped that with an ugly smile. The island sec men backed down and led Ryan and Doc up the steep street. They came to a ledge of flat land that formed another square. The building they walked toward was old even before skydark but was recognizable as a sec station. A police station as they would have called it back in the day.
They went through the heavy wooden doors. Inside were some desks and holding cells. Ryan’s arctic-blue eye slid over a rack of long blasters chained in place through the trigger guards. Two of the weapons were bolt-action predark hunting blasters and two more were double-barreled scatter-blasters of the same vintage. In other racks along the walls Ryan saw nets and traps. Still more held boar spears, catch poles and whaling lances. They seemed of recent manufacture, and well used and well maintained. The ville was rolling their own black powder but predark blasters and their ammunition were in short supply.
The constable pointed to a table and a pair of chairs. Doc ignored them and went straight to the back office. Doc flung the door open and took command of the constable’s desk. Ryan stood behind like a tombstone. The constable and his posse shifted from foot to foot beneath Ryan’s unrelenting gaze. Doc consulted his chron and rolled his eyes.
Ryan’s head turned at the sound of a wag outside.
The constable and his men were visibly relieved. The station door swung open and two tall men wearing the universal island attire of black hats, caped coats and dark glasses entered, openly carrying long, predark blasters. Their plastic furniture had long ago been replaced with local wood stocks and grips and the original matte-black finish replaced with gray phosphate. J.B. probably could have identified them instantly. Ryan noted the hilts of swords protruding from out of their coats. Baron Barat followed. He was of medium height and wore the dark island garb; however, his was of finer cut and well tailored to his frame. The baron walked up to Jorge-Teo and their faces disappeared as they tilted their broad hats together. They consulted together in whispers for a few moments, and then the baron strode into the office and sat in front of Doc. He removed his gloves and handed them to one of his sec men. His skin was chalk-white and the nails on his fingers purplish. His long black hair had streaks of silver and fell loose to his shoulders. He removed his dark glasses and Ryan wasn’t surprised to see the man from the portrait in the smaller island church gazing upon him with cool curiosity.
He turned his attention to Doc and gave him a cold, sharklike smile. His teeth were as gleaming white as Doc’s, but the baron’s purple gums had receded to make them appear entirely too long. It was the smile of a skull. “Baron…Tanner, is it?”
Ryan spoke low and threatening. “Baron Theophilus Algernon Tanner, Baron of Strafford and Baron of Maine.”
“Americans,” the baron said. The skeleton smile stayed painted on Barat’s face. The black eyes remained cold. His English was heavily accented but predark educated and formal. “Forgive me, Baron Tanner, but I have spoken with my constable, and I do not remember making your acquaintance.”
“Your constable exaggerates. I did not claim to have had the honor of your acquaintance, dear Baron. I merely informed your constable that I was aware of you.”
“Aware of me?”
“Aware of your island,” Doc corrected.
Ryan eyed the disposition of the sec men again and readied himself to start blasting. Doc sounded like he was about to drop the ball. Doc waved an impatient hand at Ryan and handed off. Ryan gave Baron Barat a withering look. “We’ve recced it.”
The baron’s face froze.
Ryan went with gut instinct. “It’s not hard to move among you. Particularly during the day.”
The baron flinched and Ryan knew he had given him a gut shot where it hurt. Barat raised a hand to Jorge-Teo and spoke a few words in Portuguese. The constable left and the baron returned to Doc. “Forgive me, Baron. I have neglected my duties as host.” Jorge-Teo came in with a tray bearing a carafe of wine, cheese and smoked fish. The constable poured wine. Doc nodded at Ryan, who assumed the role of royal food taster and picked up the goblet.
Baron Barat sighed and took up his own cup. He toasted vaguely toward Ryan and drained the goblet. He set the empty glass down, smacked his lips with relish and smiled condescendingly. Ryan took a swig from the goblet. The wine was heavier and sweeter than the communion wine on the sister island. Ryan poured it back and set the goblet down in front of Doc. The constable refilled the glass.
Doc ignored it. “Baron, let me be blunt. My ship, the Vermont, went down in the other night’s storm.”
The baron kept his poker face, but Ryan could almost hear him considering his own lost boat and calculating.
“I believe my escort ships—”
The baron blinked. “Your escort ships?”
“Yes, my Vermont was a cargo ship and was heavily laden. The Maine and Hampshire are warships and faster. Last I saw of them from the Vermont, they were running ahead of the storm. We signaled them with lanterns before we went down. They will of course return in a few days’ time.”
Ryan sensed Baron Barat’s discomfiture. Doc was playing his hand well. Now if he could just—Ryan’s stomach reared within him like a striking cobra. He tried to bring up his blaster to bear but his stomach ejected its contents so violently it almost tore the lining of his throat. Ryan fell to his hands and knees as sickness that made a mat-trans jump feel like an after-dinner belch racked him. “Doc! I—”
Ryan went fetal as his bowels spasmed.
Doc’s hand froze on the grips of his blaster as the baron’s sec men leveled their weapons. One was pointed at Doc. The other at aimed at Ryan’s retching form on the floor. Jorge-Teo relieved Doc of his LeMat, then knelt and relieved Ryan of his weapons. Doc struggled to maintain an imperious mien. “You disappoint me, Baron.”
The baron ignored Doc and poured himself another glass of wine. He swirled it in his glass and admired its color before sipping it. He peered down at Ryan in mock sympathy. “Sadly, one’s first few experiences with our native lotus are somewhat…purgative. For one who imbibes it for the first time, I must admit he was given a very powerful dose. I fear his dreams shall not be pleasant.”
“Baron Barat, I must protest this—”
Barat turned to the constable. “It has been three days since we lost Roque.” He held up his glass. “I feel the draft upon me, and must sleep until the effects have passed. You know what must be done.”
“Yes, Baron.” Jorge-Teo grinned unpleasantly at Ryan and Doc. “And what of these two?”
“Put the sec man in a cell. He will be of use to no one for at least a day.”
They both looked at Doc. “And the baron?” the constable asked.
“Yes, the baron.” Barat gave Doc a very hard and measuring look. “Make him comfortable.” The skull-face smile returned once more. “I will speak with this man again after I have slept. Bring him to the manor come sundown.”
NIGHT HAD NEARLY fallen. Mildred stood and peered out into the drizzling rain and fog. They had spent the afternoon exploring the tiny island and found damn little. She shivered in the cold ocean breeze and stepped back inside the shattered blockhouse. Mildred took out Doc’s note and read it again for lack of anything better to do. On one side was a picture of what looked to her like some kind of penguin. On the back Doc’s spidery longhand read:
Dear friends,
If you are reading this missive then you have successfully journeyed through the mat-trans. A boat approaches, time constrains me to brevity. In summary:
-being picked up by fishing boat
-believe we are in an island chain upon the Atlantic
-disposition of natives unknown
-advise caution
-circumstances of corpse most curious (Mildred, please take note of marks on deceased’s inner arms.)
-presume us to be upon the big island.
I remain,
Your faithful servant in all things,
“Doc”
Mildred turned the note over and looked at the date scratched beneath the bird sketch. “Doc wrote this three days ago.”
Jak nodded. “Not been back.”
Mildred shivered again. “Make a fire.”