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Noticing the white patch of fur across its eye and the scarring on its body, Ryan laughed in agreement. “That’s the one we should bet on,” he agreed, clapping Doc on the back.
J.B. went to speak with one of the bookies while Doc and Ryan split off into the crowd.
“Ladies and gen’lemen!” a man’s voice called from the center of the pit, and the crowd hushed, with just a few conversations continuing as whispers. Doc looked at the man. He was dark skinned with a stubble of hair upon his head, dyed scarlet with food coloring. He had dressed in a patchwork of bright clothes, a long jacket with metallic buttons that twinkled as they caught the flaming lights of the room, striped trousers and bright shined shoes. He held a cane similar to Doc’s own, and used it to gesture around the room as he went into his pitch, addressing specific members of the audience as his cane singled them out. This man acted as the ringmaster, working up the excited crowd to fever pitch before the dogs were released.
“We got us two magnificent brutes to start things off tonight,” the ringmaster announced. “Killers, the both of them, let me assure you.” He flicked the cane toward the caged mastiff with the white stripe across his eye, running the cane along the bars of the cage, antagonizing the beast. “The Streak here, he’s eighty-eight pounds o’ pure muscle. Those jaws chomp down on your arm, your leg, let me assure you, you would need some serious medical attention, my friends.” The man moved across, glaring at the other dog, banging his cane on the top of its cage before launching into similar patter about that hound.
Doc stopped listening, checking the room to try to work out where the ringmaster had appeared from and, thus, would likely disappear to. He spotted a curtained-off area across the circle from the entrance, and pushed and excuse-me’d his way toward it while the ringmaster continued his lecture.
Finally the ringmaster finished his spiel and bared his teeth at the caged animals one last time before reaching for the fence surrounding the arena. Two dog handlers, thick gloves on their hands, leaned into the arena and prepared to unlock the respective cage doors. “Unleash the hounds!” the ringmaster hollered, ending with a wolflike howl before leaping over the fence. The crowd held its collective breath as the cage doors were raised and two short-haired bundles of rage and fury leaped into the arena, scrabbling for purchase on the sawdust as they snarled at each other.
The ringmaster ducked his head low and made his way to the curtained area at the edge of the room, never once bothering to look back. Doc stood there, leaning both hands on his cane, its silver lion’s-head handle glinting in the light.
“Hot diggety, but that is one nice cane you’ve got there, sir,” Doc announced as the ringmaster walked past him, pulling the curtain aside.
The ringmaster stopped, turning a querulous face in Doc’s direction. Doc weaved his cane back and forth where it stood on its point, making the lion’s-head catch the light. “Well, thank you,” the ringmaster said as he looked at Doc, then down at the head of Doc’s ebony cane. “You not here for the fight?”
Doc shrugged. “I decided to save my money for a later duel. I figure that the odds may become more agreeable as the evening wears thinner.”
The ringmaster nodded. “It’s a sound plan. Lot of people just come for the spectacle. They’re out of jack by the time the real action kicks off.”
A cheer surged from the crowd as one of the dogs attached its jaws to the neck of the other, tossing the wounded animal around the circle. The ringmaster pulled back the curtain and gestured inside. “You wanna talk a little out of people’s way?” he suggested.
“Much obliged.” Doc followed the ringmaster through and found himself in a small dressing area in a corridor, a mirror propped up against a crate. Farther along the corridor were four cages, holding two pit bulls, a ridgeback and what looked like some kind of cross-breed Alsatian-cum-wolf.
Doc had handed the ringmaster his swordstick and he waited patiently while the man examined the lion’s head atop it. “This is some fine workmanship,” the ringmaster admired. “Are you in the market to sell this?”
Doc tried to look noncommittal. “A man has to eat, my friend.”
The ringmaster smiled. “That he does. What do you want for it?”
Doc pointed a thumb back to the curtain. “Mayhap nothing if my strategy pans out. Who knows when Lady Luck will smile?”
The ringmaster reluctantly handed the cane back to Doc. “Lady Luck, she can be an unfaithful mistress. If you do find you want to sell it, I would be very interested.”
“That’s mighty kind,” Doc said, nodding to himself as he strode back toward the arena. As he reached a hand up to part to curtain he stopped and, as though in afterthought, turned back to the ringmaster. “I guess I’ll know when you’re here by the beacon.”
The ringmaster looked at him. “The beacon?” he asked, puffing at the cheroot.
“You know,” Doc said, “the tower. I did not see it myself, got here early, but you light that when it is fight day, am I right?”
The ringmaster laughed. “That ain’t nothin’ to do with me, man. Nothin’ to do with anyone, far as I can tell.”
Doc scratched his head, further messing his already unruly white hair. “Then what’s it there for?”
“You know, I don’t think anyone in this whole ville knows the answer to that. When it first appeared some of the good men of Fairburn tried pulling the thing down. Succeeded, actually. Then the outlanders come and shot six men—” he snapped his fingers “—like that. Chilled ’em, stone cold. Told us we were not to touch the towers again.”
“Towers?” Doc asked, emphasizing the plural.
“I hear they’re dotted all over,” the ringmaster told him. “Near the tracks. That’s how they travel, you see? By the tracks.”
Doc was mystified, trying to recall if he had seen any tracks while the companions made their way to Fairburn. “I am surprised they can find them,” he said after a couple of seconds’ thought, not really sure what he was referring to but hoping it would entice the other man to tell him more.
“Oh, they worked damn hard gettin’ those tracks in serviceable condition,” the ringmaster assured him. “’Round here wasn’t so bad. The tracks were just a little buried by the dust storms, I think. But some places they must’ve had to rebuild them pretty much from scratch.”
Realization dawned on Doc then. “You mean, the railroad tracks.”
“Too right I do.” The ringmaster spit. “Couldn’t travel around in that monstrosity otherwise, could they?”
Doc shook his head in agreement before turning back to the curtain. “I shall get back to you about the sale,” he told the ringmaster, “if my bets do not pan out the way I would surely like them to.”
“Good luck,” the ringmaster told him, and Doc was touched—it sounded like he meant it.
Out in the main room, the crowd was whooping and cheering. Doc scanned them, looking for Ryan or J.B. among the sea of heads. He spotted Ryan almost immediately, the tall man towering over the crowd around him. He seemed to be talking with a pretty blond woman, but when Doc got closer he realized that his friend was trying to extract himself from the conversation.
“Excuse me, madam,” Doc said loudly as he interposed between the lady and his friend.
Ryan scanned Doc’s face. “What news, Doc? Any success?”
“A little. Let’s find J.B. and I’ll explain it to you both at the same time.”
K RYSTY SUDDENLY SAT UP in bed, tilting her head as though to catch a faraway sound.
Mildred put down the book she had been reading. “What is it?”
“Something,” Krysty began slowly. “Something’s out there.” She looked at the window, and Mildred’s gaze followed.
Half dozing in a seat in the corner of the room, Jak shook himself and was suddenly wide awake. “What?” he asked the women simply.
“I can hear it,” Krysty told them both. “Coming closer now. Screams all around it, like a blanket. A blanket of agony.”
Mildred looked at Krysty, wondering what it was that she thought she could hear. Her companion looked disheveled, black rings still heavy around her eyes, her rose-petal lips so much paler than normal. “There aren’t any screams,” Mildred assured her. “It’s just your mind playing tricks. Try to forget about it now. Try to keep calm.”
Krysty slowly sank back onto the bed, calming her breathing with an effort. “But they sound so close,” she mumbled.
“I know, Krysty,” Mildred told her, taking one of her hands in her own. “Just try to rest, recover your strength. And in the morning it will all be over. No more screams, I promise.”
Jak was standing by the window, his nose pressed to the glass and a white hand pushed against it over his brow, trying to block out his own pale reflection. He craned farther, turning his head sideways to see a greater distance. Then he said a single word. “Screams.”
Mildred turned, shocked. “What? What did you say?” she asked him.
The albino teenager didn’t move from the window. “Screams. Coming.”
Mildred stood beside him, peering over his shoulder. She knew that Jak had incredible eyesight, almost superhuman, which was decidedly odd for an albino. That very ability had saved her life more than once, an early-warning system for all of the companions. She tried to follow where he was looking, squinting to discern whatever he had seen. “What is it?” she asked.
“There,” he said, jabbing his finger toward the skeletal tower that loomed over the ville wall. Mildred followed as Jak traced his finger along the glass. “See it?”
“What am I looking for?” she asked, unable to identify anything unusual in the darkened landscape beyond the wall.
Jak turned from the window, glancing at Mildred before marching to the door. “Lights,” he told her.
“Wait, you can’t just…” Mildred began.
“Have to,” Jak told her. “Find out. Tell Ryan.” He left the room, quietly pulling the door closed behind him.
Mildred turned back to the window, pushing the side of her face against the cold glass as she tried to locate whatever it was that Jak was investigating. Almost a minute passed, her breath clouding against the glass before she spotted it—a tiny flicker of crimson light, there and then gone, out in the far distance. She watched for it in the darkness, her heart fluttering anxiously in her chest, until it suddenly reappeared, larger and presumably closer. It wasn’t just one light. Now she could make out there were three separate light sources, infernal red and traveling side by side. “What the hell is that?” she muttered to herself.
J AK’S HANDS WERE STRAIGHT , held like blades to cut through the air as he ran across the street and into the shadows between the buildings beyond, taking the most direct route to the wall and the lights beyond it.
When the high wall came into view, Jak assessed it, mentally calculating where the ridges, the natural hand-and footholds in the wood were. Wiry and thin, it was easy to mistake Jak Lauren for a younger boy, but in reality his body was a powerful tool, not an inch of fat on the whole frame; he was built sleek, like a jungle cat.
With three quick steps Jak was up and over the wall, the soles of his boots barely glancing off the wooden surface as he sprang up it, just quiet tapping sounds to mark his passing. He dropped to the other side, landing in a crouch, his weight distributed evenly. Then, without a second’s hesitation, he was running again, his flowing mane of hair a snow-white streak cutting through the darkness.
He focused on the lights approaching across the dusty plain, flaming red and satanic. When he turned his head he could just barely make out the sounds, as well, carrying uncertainly across the flatland with nothing to amplify their echo to his ears. Most of all, however, he felt its approach, heavy on his booted soles, a tremor through the dirt, rumbling across the land.
“A TRAIN ?” J.B. repeated.
Doc looked around the crowded room, wondering how much of this they wanted to announce to the strangers around them. He stood with J.B. and Ryan near the back of the crowd, close to the lone entry and exit door. “That is what the man told me,” he explained, gesturing with his hand that they keep the volume of their conversation low.
“It’s not the first time we’ve come across one,” Ryan reminded him.
“Yeah, I know, but you’ve got to build tracks and grease points, there’s a shed-load of maintenance with just the physical upkeep of those tracks, let alone finding or building an engine to run on them.” He whistled softly. “It takes some doing.” The companions had seen trains operating before, but they were rare in the fractured landscape of the Deathlands.
The three men stood in silence, each turning over the prospect in his mind. Finally, Doc spoke. “What if they are using the old tracks, prenukecaust. Could that be done?”
J.B. adjusted the spectacles on his nose, wiping away the sweat that had pooled under the nose clips. “It’s possible, Doc. Usually it was the transport links that were the first to go, targeted by the Reds.”
“When we got here,” Ryan stated, “you said that this place had avoided much of the bloodshed and bombing.”
J.B. nodded. “Never been here myself, but I heard that North Dakota got mostly passed over. Too far north, I guess, and nowhere near the big conurbs. Weather got scragged, of course, but that’s all over Deathlands. That’s global.”
Suddenly the crowd surged, clapping and cheering, and the three men turned to watch the action in the sunken arena. The darker-coated dog had just sunk its huge teeth into the neck of the dog with the white blaze. White blaze made a whimpering noise, a nasty choking sound coming from his throat as specks of blood amassed around his opponent’s fangs. He tried to pull away, but the other’s jaws were locked tight, unwilling to release him. The dark furred dog pushed the sharp claws of its left forelimb into the other’s chest, tipping him over, still clinging to his neck with powerful jaws.
J.B. turned away from the action, leading the way to the door. “Looks like you lost your bet, Ryan,” he said.
T HROUGH THE WINDOW, Mildred watched the red lights getting larger as they closed in on the ville. There were more of them now, and she could see that they made up some kind of pattern across the front of a large, dark shadow, low to the ground, with numerous wispy lights trailing behind. The shadow was moving steadily toward the ville, not especially fast, just steady, relentless.
A moving speck caught her eye, lightly colored against the night-dark sand. Jak. He was running an intercept path across the plain, torso held low to make him less visible, a smaller target. He ran with considerable speed toward the red lights.
The flames of hell danced in those lights, Mildred was sure of it.
T HE GROUND ALL around Jak was vibrating now, shuddering as the monstrosity lumbered toward the ville. He narrowed his eyes as he ran toward it, trying to see past the bright glowing spots that covered its leading face. A vast shadow plowed relentlessly onward behind those crimson spots, the grim reaper stalking the Deathlands.
Fifty feet away, Jak suddenly threw himself to the ground, hunkering down, working his elbows into the sand to create a ridge in front of him. He reached to his belt, pulled the Colt Python, reassured by the weight in his hands.
The shadow trudged closer, belching smoke and fog into the night sky. Jak watched the glowing slits approach, like multiple eyes in the front of the creature. And behind, the metal carapace, some terrible insect grown vast.
It was a train like Jak had never seen. Painted black, sulphurous eyes glowing like embers across its engine, dragging its bulbous cars like pregnant women being pulled by their hair, stretching back along the tracks farther than Jak could see. And on the front, perversely, was a mutie woman carved of wood, her bare breasts pushed forward to lead the way, her torso morphing into reptilian scale as she disappeared into the engine housing, lit only by the reddish-orange glow from those hellfire slits. The woman’s face was a picture of agony, mouth taut in silent, never-ending scream, bloodred tears painted from her straining eyes.
As Jak watched from his meager hiding place, he realized that the train was slowing and that people were being disgorged from its bloated cars.
Chapter Five
Jak lay perfectly still, the Colt Python resting in his right hand, watching the hideous train pull to a halt beside the skeletal tower. A dozen men had leaped from the first two cars as the train slowed, all of them armed and several brandishing their blasters in readiness, as though they expected an attack. The men spread out across the area, checking, Jak realized, for people who might be hiding, checking for people like him. He hunkered down lower, wishing for better cover in the open plains. For the moment, the armed men remained close to the tower, which was two whole car lengths away from Jak’s current position. Despite leaving it open to the elements and to attack through the day, they had arrived to protect it now—and Jak’s curiosity was piqued.
The train lurched to a halt and a huge cloud of steam burst from the funnel atop its insectlike engine. For a moment Jak watched it through the cloud, like trying to make out faces in the fog, until the steam disbursed, filling the atmosphere all around with a malodorous mist that irritated his nose and throat. Burning—the train smelled of burning.
Instructions were being shouted now, and more people were stepping from the train. The first group had been fighters, sec-men types, well-armed and well-muscled, men of action. But the second group was made up of more general body types.
Two shirtless men were struggling with a cylinder less than three feet in length. Jak guessed that it wouldn’t reach to his waist if it was stood on its end. But seemed to be heavy—the men struggled with it, walking in irregular spurts as they carried it to the tower, quick discussions preceding each movement. A sec man followed them, casually holding a short-handled club, shouting instructions.
Three others followed, two men and a woman, looking nervously around as they left the security of the train. One of the men looked quite a bit older than the others, wispy gray hair blowing around on his balding head, glasses perched on his nose. The other two were younger, midthirties perhaps—about Ryan’s age. All three looked uncomfortable as they walked warily to the tower, taking care not to slip on the dry, sandy ground.
While they made their way to the structure, Jak turned to examine the train. It stretched off down the tracks for a seemingly impossible length. Its details lost to darkness, Jak could see faint lights burning in the cars as it waited down the length of railroad. He held a thumb up to his eye, trying to estimate the length of this beast of chrome and steel, but there were no landmarks to adequately judge it by. A quarter mile, perhaps a little less—that would be his guess. Helluva train.
None of it matched. Though too dark to make out the detail, even with Jak’s unearthly vision, he could clearly see that the cars were constructed ad hoc, random pieces of junk transformed into containers to travel the metal tracks. Some were straight conversions, old train cars pulled out of the enforced retirement of the Long Winter. Others looked like they had been constructed by a blind man dancing a jig in a junkyard, choosing pieces wherever he tripped, bulbous or holed or both, only their wheels fitting the gauge of the tracks.
Noise came from some of the lighted cars, laughing and shrieking, people having fun, their voices and the sound of clinking glasses carrying to Jak over the empty plain now that the shuddering train had ceased generating its arthritic cacophony of movement.
The three people had reached the tower beside the nose end of the train, and they called out and pointed at the ground around the base of the tower. The younger man was setting up a small tripod, unfolding a large sheet of paper that he held out to the width of his arm span and consulted diligently—a map, Jak realized. The woman joined him, jabbing at the map, then pointing at the sky above them, and the man nodded his agreement. Then he crouched slightly, and put his eye to a small metallic box that rested atop the tripod. His right hand fiddled with a knob sticking from the side of the box, and Jak realized that this was some kind of seeing device that he was lining up to check on his whereabouts or the whereabouts of something important to the man and his team.
Meanwhile, two burly thugs worked at the oil drum canister that rested at the base of the scaffold tower. At first Jak thought they were trying to move the half-buried can, but then he saw them remove the large metal plate that formed its lid.
One of the men at the tower put his fingers to his lips and loudly whistled. The cry went out. “More light!”
There was movement to Jak’s left, farther down the train, and two men wheeled a cart from the fourth car down an unfolding ramp and across the dirt. As they passed Jak, barely eight feet in front of his hiding position, he could clearly see the cart. Set on a rig on top of it were three, heavy, round spotlights of the type found in theaters, and a petroleum generator rested on the cart’s base. When they reached the site of the tower, the genny was switched on and it began to chug loudly, spluttering as it started converting fuel to power, filling the air with the rotting fruit stench of petroleum. The spotlights came on in a blaze, dimming a moment, then reaching full intensity. The cart was positioned so that the spots pointed at the open canister at the tower’s base. People milled around, blocking Jak’s line of sight.
The albino teen looked around, conscious of the guards patrolling the surrounding area. They seemed fairly lax, as if they weren’t really expecting trouble, and Jak reasoned that they had had trouble in the past and had dealt with it in a definite manner, the way that scared interested spectators away from future excursions. Whatever, he needed to get closer to the tower, to see for himself exactly what these train people were doing here. If he could see what they were up to, he might have the answer to what the tower actually was, its purpose.
With a swift check over his shoulder, Jak pushed himself off the ground and scrambled across the plain toward the tower, keeping clear of the glowing red lights cast by the holes in the train’s carapace.
He was just forty paces from the tower, then thirty, twenty, and suddenly he had almost run slap-bang into one of the huge sec man dressed in muted colors and holding an a longblaster. Jak dropped silently to the ground, and was reassured that the sec man showed no reaction. Swiftly, Jak clambered away on elbows and knees, the noise of his movement masked by the vibrating gasoline generator.
Jak watched as the three nervous types instructed the others. The woman dipped a thin line of metal into the buried canister, and when she pulled it out it glistened with liquid. She looked at the dipstick for a moment, and the older man with the wispy gray hair spoke to her, writing the reading into a book he had produced from his jacket pocket. He showed her the page and the pair consulted for a half minute. Then the older man pointed to the two shirtless men who had hefted the heavy, three-foot-high cylinder over and instructed them to bring it to him.
Their companion continued to check through his tripod’s eyepiece, occasionally pulling away and using his fingers to count off some calculation, his lips moving.
The two shirtless men had brought the cylinder to the area beneath the tower, and wedged it into the dirt as they stood waiting for further instructions. The older man leaned down, clutching at a muscle in his back and wincing before he adjusted the glasses on his nose to read off something from the side of the cylindrical tank. Satisfied, he nodded and consulted with the woman and the tripod man. There was a hasty discussion, with a lot of arm waving, but Jak couldn’t hear what they were saying over the noise of the genny running the spotlights.
After a while, one of the burly sec men stepped over, his face angry, and jabbed at the older man with a meaty paw. The older man checked his wrist chron and nodded in supplication.
Jak watched as the shirtless men tipped the cylinder toward the open barrel in the ground. The younger man who had set up the tripod shouted a single word, loud enough that it carried to Jak’s ears. “Careful!” Jak shook his head, brushing his white hair from his face unconsciously as he tried to discern what it was that the group was doing. They had unscrewed a cap at the top of the smaller cylinder and were carefully tipping it until a thick drool of liquid poured from it into the barrel beneath the tower. The liquid didn’t pour easily—it had lumps in it and it trickled from the cylinder spout in fits and starts. The gunk was a grayish color, glistening in the harsh spotlights.
Suddenly the operation was called to a halt, the older man, the younger man and the woman all calling for a stop at the same time, shouting over one another. The shirtless men stopped pouring the liquid from the cylinder, tipping it backward until it rested upright again on its base, denting into the sand. One of the shirtless men leaned down, screwing the black cap back on, while the woman tried her dipstick in the liquid of the barrel once again. Satisfied with her findings, she nodded and gave a thumbs-up.
The older man and the woman turned, walking slowly back to the train, deep in conversation. The other man was busy folding the legs of his tripod back together and inserting it into a plastic carry case. An instruction was given by the thug who had pressured the group—a foreman of some kind, Jak reasoned—and the genny was shut down. The lights dimmed and went out, and the generator shuddered a few times before finally sitting still on the cart.
The whole mysterious group was making its way back to the train and it was time for Jak to make his way back, too, to tell Ryan and the others all that he had witnessed. He couldn’t begin to fathom what it all meant, but he trusted that Ryan and the others would make sense of it given enough information and time. The barrel of liquid seemed vital to the operation—was that somehow connected to the tower, beneath the sands, where they couldn’t see?
