скачать книгу бесплатно
The albino stopped in front of J.B., his breath ragged for a moment until he got it under control. Ryan and the others joined them, as Jak began to enthusiastically tell of his findings, gesturing repeatedly toward the northeast.
“Tall. Big tall,” Jak began, the words stringing together into his own version of speech. “Towers into sky, like old Libberlady.”
“What is it?” Ryan asked. “What did you see?”
“A tower, like skeleton, the air. Near it a ville.”
Mildred sucked in her breath suddenly, so loud that the other companions turned to look at her. “A ville, Ryan,” she said. “It is just what we need. I can examine Krysty there, it’s ideal.” No one spoke, and Mildred saw the doubt on Ryan’s features. “We can all bed down there, maybe get more supplies,” she added, a gambler trying to sweeten the pot.
“Could be trouble, Ryan,” J.B. stated flatly.
Ryan looked in the direction that Jak had been pointing, weighing the options in his mind. Doc wondered if he should say something, like some old-time counsel for the defense, pleading with Ryan for the lenience of the court. Krysty needed to stop; in fact, all of them would benefit from it. But the Armorer was right, too—sometimes a new ville was nothing but chilling waiting to happen, and most villes didn’t take kindly to outlanders, especially a bunch of well-armed nomads with nothing much to offer.
Ryan started to march to the northeast, the direction that Jak had come from. “Let’s go look at this tower,” he stated.
The others followed, with Doc and Mildred taking a position on either side of the sick Krysty.
I T TOOK FORTY MINUTES to reach Jak’s tower with Ryan setting a brisk pace. As they got closer, they could see it resting on the horizon, its thin struts seeming to waver in the heat haze.
When they were fifty paces away, Doc stated his opinion. “It is just a pylon,” he asserted.
J.B. didn’t bother to turn back as he addressed the older man. “Then where are the lines?”
Shifting his grip around Krysty’s back, Doc leaned his cane against his leg and held his free hand up to shield his eyes, staring at the towering structure. J.B. was right—there were no power lines, not even the trace of where they might have once attached.
Mildred’s voice, urgent and quiet, broke into his thoughts. “Doc.”
The old man turned to look at her across their suffering colleague. “What is—?” He stopped as the shiny red droplet twinkled in the sunlight, catching his eye. Krysty’s nose was bleeding, a trickle of blood running from her left nostril, working its way to her deathly pale lips.
Doc started to call for Ryan and the others, but Mildred suddenly stumbled and Krysty lurched out of their grip, falling to the ground, making a muffled thump as her body compacted the sand.
Doc knelt, gently turning Krysty’s head, pulling up her face. She spluttered, choking on a mouthful of sand. Mildred regained her balance and crouched beside them. “How is she?” she asked.
“She’s breathing. Are you okay?” he asked Mildred.
Mildred brushed sand from her fatigue pants, little heaps of it sailing from the covers on the bulbous pockets. “I’m fine, I’m good. She just suddenly…I don’t know, did you feel it?”
“She became deadweight,” Doc responded, and immediately wished he had used a less resonant term.
Pulling an otoscope from her bag of meager possessions, Mildred held it to Krysty’s eyes. Doc unfolded his kerchief, with its blue-swallow-eye pattern, and offered it to Krysty.
“I think I’m okay,” Krysty told them both after a moment. “Just went weak for a second. Can you hear that? The noise?”
Mildred looked around her, then back to her patient. “There’s no noise, sweetie. Just the wind.”
Krysty looked confused, as though she would burst into tears at any second. “But it’s so loud.” She whimpered.
Doc looked at Krysty, a woman he had known for more adventures than any man should have in a single lifetime, and his heart broke. Krysty Wroth: capable and beautiful. No, not beautiful—stunning. The stunning, utterly capable woman he had trusted his life to on more occasions than he could count on the fingers of both hands, was sitting in front of him, confused and helpless. He never thought he would see her like this. Slowly, being as gentle as they could, Doc and Mildred helped Krysty off the ground. They didn’t bother to brush her down, as there didn’t seem to be any point. They just needed to get her moving, before she stopped moving for good. Together, they half carried, half dragged her toward the tower where the others waited.
“B IG, ISN’T IT ?” Ryan said to no one in particular as the six companions stood at the base of the tower.
“Yeah, sure is,” J.B. agreed, using the hem of his shirt to clean the lenses of his spectacles before perching them back on his nose. He took a step forward and stretched a hand toward the metal structure. He held it there, beside the tower, for a few seconds before announcing that there was no power emanating from it that he could feel. It was a quick test, hardly scientific, but it sufficed in the situation.
The tower rose forty feet into the sky. Built from struts of metal, like scaffolding, it looked somewhat like a power pylon, just as Doc had guessed. It was not a pylon, though. Up close, that was evident. There were no attachments, nothing feeding to it or from it. It was a free-standing, skeletal tower, roughly pyramidal in shape, albeit very thin. The base was only twelve feet square, and it closed to its tip very gradually.
A large metal canister, something like a prenukecaust oil drum, rested in the center of its base, half-buried in the sand.
The structure was utterly silent and displayed no moving parts, a surrealist statue on the plain.
Finally, Mildred spoke up, asking the question on everyone’s lips. “Well, what is it?”
“Nuked if I know,” Ryan replied.
Chapter Two
The companions watched as Jak clambered up the side of the structure, his hands clutching at the metal struts.
“Our Jak’s quite the climber,” Doc said in admiration when the youth reached the peak in a handful of seconds.
Both J.B. and Ryan had already run their lapel rad counters over the structure, making sure that it wasn’t hot. Then they had tested the metal legs as best as they could, for electric current and magnetic attraction, as well as eyeballing for fractures or rust. It looked stable and had hardly been touched by the elements. The obvious conclusion was that it was newly built, but by whom and why, they couldn’t tell.
“You see anything?” Ryan called to Jak at the top of the tower.
“Same,” Jak yelled back. “All over same.”
Mildred sighed, looking at the tower as Jak spidered down. “Ryan, we really need to get to that ville.” She waited, looking at Ryan as he gazed at the structure. “Ryan?”
He nodded before looking at her. “Just seems wrong, leaving this tower here. Has to be here for a purpose, Mildred,” he told her.
Mildred shrugged. “Maybe they tie their horses to it,” she suggested, looking over at the tiny ville they could all see about two hundred and fifty yards away.
“Mebbe tie prisoners,” Jak chipped in.
Doc’s cheery voice cut through them, intentionally loud, like a wake-up call. “Perhaps we could just ask them,” he suggested. The group turned to look at him. He was busy hefting Krysty to her feet once more, getting his arm beneath hers so that she could lean against him as she walked.
Krysty looked in no condition to walk. Dried blood married her face around her nose. The skin around her eyes was puffy and had darkened almost to black, and the whites of her eyes remained bloodshot red. Her flame-colored hair was a mass of tangles, twirling this way and that like the stems of a climbing plant. From the way that Doc carried her, it appeared that she had added weight somehow, her muscles no longer strong enough to support her.
Aware that he had everyone’s attention, Doc pronounced, “Miss Wroth and I are going to make our way to yonder ville and ask some questions in the hopes of enlightenment.” He struggled two steps with Krysty, and it was clear that he was taking all of her weight now.
J.B. had scrambled across to Krysty’s other side. “Let me give you a hand, Doc,” he told the older man, but he left it open, as though it were a request.
In the end, Ryan and J.B. shared Krysty’s weight, relieving the older man as the group trekked down the incline to the ville. She had mercifully fallen into a slumber, and they carried her by shoulders and feet to make the journey easier. Mildred sidled up to Doc and gave him a wink. “You sly old coot.” She laughed.
Doc shrugged. If it had been left up to J.B., they would still be studying the mysterious tower a month from now with Ryan deluding himself about Krysty’s health. Krysty’s problems, Doc had reasoned, were somewhat more pressing just now.
Head held low to his shoulders, Jak ran ahead once more, kicking up little puffs of sand as he edged sideways down the incline toward the buildings.
T HE VILLE WAS SUNKEN slightly, located in a natural dip in the surrounding plains. It was made up of almost two dozen ramshackle buildings, constructed from scrounged wood and metal. The majority of the buildings were single-story, with only four in the center going to two stories along with a circular barn at the far edge of town. A high wall surrounded the whole settlement, and the companions could hear dogs barking furiously as they got closer.
The sun was setting when they reached the ville’s high gates, turning the skies a burning red as it sauntered under the horizon in the west behind them. The sturdy gates were constructed of strips of rough wood tied together with old rope and held in place with rusty hinges. Twice as tall as a man, the gates were set within a similarly high wall constructed from a patchwork of materials. Opened together, the gates could let a wide wagon pass through into the ville, but they would be kept closed for most of the time to discourage possible looters.
Two sentries patrolled the top of the wall, and they came over to the edge of the gates when Ryan and his companions approached. “You want somethin’, outlanders?” the sentry to the left called out, casually brandishing a large-bore shotgun over the rim of the wall. He was a heavy man, wearing a tattered, checked shirt and two days’ worth of beard. Across from him, on the other side of the gates, a sallow young man dressed in similar clothing trained a wooden crossbow on the companions. Ryan judged that its range was insufficient to reach them as far from the gates as they were, and certainly not with any appreciable accuracy.
Ryan let Krysty’s feet drop gently to the ground and waved his companions back, instructing them to wait as he went to speak with the sentry.
“We’re not here looking for trouble,” he began, holding his hands at shoulder height to show he held no weapon. The longblaster was clearly visible on his back, of course, and he had a blaster at his hip, but this was the Deathlands. The sentries would have been more suspicious of an apparently unarmed man than one who came at them blasters blazing.
The sentry on the left raised the muzzle of his weapon a little, encouraging Ryan to continue.
“My friend back there is ill,” Ryan said, his gaze never leaving the man’s eyes. “We come seeking somewhere to bed down, mebbe look her over.”
The sentry with the crossbow shook his head, looking over at his comrade. “We don’t got no healin’ to give to outlanders,” Shotgun stated bluntly, and his companion made a show of raising his crossbow higher, pointing it at Ryan’s forehead.
“You best be on your way, One-Eye.” The crossbow-wielding man chuckled.
Ryan didn’t flinch, he just continued to look at the man with the shotgun. He bore these two no malice. They were just doing their job. Just protecting their own.
“We’ve got our own healer,” Ryan assured them. The trace of a smile crossed his lips as he saw both the sentries look across to his companions, squinting against the setting sun as they tried to guess which of the ragtag group might have valuable medical skills. “Be willing to let the healer take a look at your people, too,” Ryan suggested, “if you need that. Free of charge, if you can give us somewhere to examine our own.”
The sentries looked at each another, muttered a few words that Ryan didn’t catch. But he detected the change in atmosphere immediately, and leaped to one side as the buckshot exploded toward him with a loud crack.
The sentry with the shotgun bragged loudly as he targeted the barrel at the fleeing Ryan, preparing a second shot from the homemade weapon. “Think we’ll just chill you and take your healer for our own, if it’s okay with you, One-Eye!” He laughed.
Ryan had already loosed his 9 mm SIG-Sauer P-226 blaster from its holster. Straight-armed, he reeled off a single shot. The sentry staggered back, dropping the shotgun as it exploded in his hand, taking the full force of the Sauer’s bullet.
Ryan targeted the second sentry, the one with the crossbow, but there was no need. J.B. had the man dead center in the sights of his mini-Uzi, Doc had his LeMat revolver aimed at the man, and Mildred and Jak had crouched around Krysty, poised with their own weapons—a ZKR 551 target revolver in Mildred’s right hand, a .357 Magnum Colt Python in Jak’s—to offer her necessary protection. Slowly, carefully, the younger sentry placed his crossbow on the ridge of the wall at his feet before raising his hands.
The sentry to the right, the one who had been holding the shotgun, cursed as he clutched at his bleeding right hand. But there was admiration in that curse as much as anger. “Black dust, but that is some good shooting, friend,” he pronounced incredulously.
“For a one-eye,” Ryan called back, keeping his blaster trained on the sentries, whipping it between the two.
The sentry laughed, the blood dripping from his hand where the homemade shotgun had been a few moments before. “Well, besides some dead-on shooting and a healer, you got anything worth my opening these gates for? Or should I go call me some reinforcements and see if we can’t negotiate with you some more?”
Ryan looked at him, never lowering his blaster as he spoke. “Reinforcements won’t be necessary,” he told the sentry. “Like I said, we’re not here looking for trouble. Just a hole to sleep in for me and my people. We’re willing to pay for it, with ammo if you’ll take it. Or we can walk away right now, and you’ve learned a little lesson in trying to take what isn’t yours.” Ryan’s expression remained fixed as he watched the sentry.
The sentry smirked, nodding to himself. “You got ammo? Why didn’t you say so earlier, One-Eye?” he asked. “We got the best nuking dog fights here, if you’re a betting man, might even double or triple your wager if you bet as well as you shoot.”
Ryan nodded, warily lowering his blaster. After a moment J.B. and Doc followed his lead, carefully relaxing, but keeping their weapons in hand in case things turned nasty again. “Triple at least, I reckon,” he told the older sentry.
“Hell, yeah.” The sentry laughed. “Now, my boy here is gonna open the gates, and everybody is going to just play nice. Sound okay with you and your people, outlander?”
Ryan glanced across at J.B. and Doc to see if either would object. Then he answered by holstering his SIG-Sauer P-226. “You want my healer to look at that hand?” he asked as the younger man disappeared from sight.
The old sentry nodded. “I would be much obliged,” he agreed.
J.B. AND D OC CARRIED Krysty through the open gates and into the tiny ville. She seemed heavy, a felled doe from a hunting expedition, as her feet dragged on the sandy ground. Mildred had suggested it would be easier to carry her by shoulders and feet, as Ryan and J.B. had when they’d brought her here from the tower, but Doc wouldn’t hear of it. “Mayhap she cannot go in walking,” he had told them, “but she will at least go in looking like she can walk.”
J.B. agreed. Psychologically, it made sense to keep Krysty upright. That way she would appear hurt to the citizens of the ville and not dead.
The older sentry met them as they walked through the gates, his younger companion working the mechanism to open them—the gates worked on some kind of weighted cantilever system. J.B. made a mental note to examine it in more detail when the sun was higher in the sky. The old sentry had wrapped a makeshift bandage around his right hand, torn from the bottom of his checkered shirt. He smiled as he greeted Ryan and the companions.
“You sure gave my hand a walloping there,” he told Ryan. “That was some nuke-hot shooting you did.”
Ryan shrugged, not wanting to dwell on it, aware that the old sentry may yet be itching for payback.
“My name’s Tom,” the sentry went on, before indicating his younger partner beside the gate. “And this is my boy, Davey.”
The younger sentry, Davey, brushed a hand through his hair and slowly eyed Mildred from the chest up. “Pleased to meet you,” he finally said, oblivious to the others.
“Flattered,” she responded with a fixed grin.
Tom carried on, pointing down the single street of the walled-in ville. “This here is Fairburn. Don’t look like much, I guess, but we still call it home.”
“It looks very homely,” Ryan said. “I’m Ryan, and these are my traveling companions,” he said by way of introduction, not bothering with anyone else’s name. He would sooner they keep a low profile for now, at least as much as strangers in a walled ville could. “You said something about maybe having somewhere we could stay?”
Tom pointed to the center of the small ville, where the four twin-storied buildings stood. “There’s an eatery over there. Can’t miss it. Just follow your noses to the stink. Jemmy there will sort you out a room. Just ask at the counter.”
As the companions made their way down the dusty thoroughfare, two dogs rushed over, yapping and snarling playfully, their thick, saliva-smeared tongues hanging from their mouths. They were mongrels, stupid and friendly, their tails wagging as they looked at the well-armed strangers. Jak issued a low growl from deep within his throat, and he narrowed his pure red eyes as he looked at the mutts. As one, the dogs turned tail and ran, seeking more willing playmates.
Doc looked at the sentry’s bloodied hand as he passed, hefting Krysty. “I do not imagine you have much call for renting out rooms here.”
“Probably depends a little on who’s on the gate,” Tom agreed.
“Come over when you’re ready,” Ryan called back, “and our healer will take a look at that hand.”
The companions headed into the center of the ville, with Krysty still lolling between Doc and J.B.
Chapter Three
A huge chandelier hung from the ceiling of Jemmy’s by a thick, golden chain, its crystal droplets casting a flotilla of sunlight specks across the walls of the room where they rippled and bounced as if living things. The impressive chandelier was utterly incongruous, at odds with the simple, rustic design of the barnlike barroom.
Crude tables and chairs were scattered around the room, some simply upended wooden crates, seats ripped from old automobiles. A few men sat around, playing with stacks of dominoes or just jawing and drinking, mostly armed with remade revolvers, a couple of shotguns resting on the tables. Two women were propped at the bar, heavily made-up over expressions of utter disinterest. The wide room smelled of rotgut.
Doc and J.B. helped Krysty to the bar, which Ryan was leaning over, looking into the back room, trying to locate whoever was serving.
The two women propping up the bar looked at Ryan, then the older one—all of nineteen, perhaps—turned her head and shouted toward the back, her husky voice crackling like fire. “Jem, you got some new customers.”
A moment later a woman came out of the back room, taking in the companions in a quick sweep of her hazel eyes before turning a bright, flawless smile on Ryan. She was dressed in a man’s shirt, too large for her, with sleeves rolled up past her elbows, her dark hair tied back. Ryan guessed that she was in her early thirties, skin tanned and hands calloused from a tough, outdoor life. She tossed aside the towel she had been wiping her hands with and asked what she could do for everyone.
“We’re looking to stop over in your fine ville,” Ryan told her. “Could do with rooms if you have them.”
“Here for the dogs?” the woman asked conversationally.
Ryan nodded. Behind him, J.B. had stepped away from the bar and was looking around the room, scanning for possible exits. Through the kitchen area behind the bar—where the woman had appeared from—he could see an open door leading to the backyard, the ground nothing more than sand. There was a well out there, really just a hole in the ground with a roped bucket beside it, framed by the open door. Off to the right of the bar, wooden stairs at the back of the room led up, and a second-floor balcony surrounded the room on three sides, with several doors leading off—most likely the lodging rooms for the establishment, transaction rooms for the two gaudy sluts working the bar. A door beneath the staircase proclaimed that it led to toilet facilities, though J.B. guessed it was probably nothing more than a fenced-in part of the backyard.
“You know how long you’re here for?” Jemmy asked Ryan as he placed a few rounds of spare ammo on the bar. The ammo was useless to the companions, none of it fitting their blasters, but spare ammo served as the gold standard for the Deathlands.
Ryan looked around the room as though surveying the whole ville. “Nice place,” he said. “Who knows? Mebbe a few nights. That be a problem for you?”
