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Doc smiled wryly. “Well, they do not build them like they used to.”
Vava plucked at Ryan’s sleeve and spoke rapidly, first pointing at the church and then pointing out to sea. Ago nodded and appeared to agree with everything she was saying.
Ryan sighed inwardly. “What’s she saying, Doc?”
“I’m not sure. Something about Pai Joao and danger.”
“Pai Gao?” Ryan scratched his chin. “That’s a card game. They got a gambling house in the ville we need to avoid?”
Doc smiled tolerantly. “No, I believe Pai in Portuguese means ‘Father,’ as in Father Joao, a priest. I believe we are being warned against him.”
Ryan stared at the forbidding structure of the church and what appeared to be statues of winged muties standing guard over the eaves. In the Deathlands everything was a survival situation, and most things were negotiable through barter, jack or the threat of violence. But Ryan had seen book pounders with motivated congregations who could convince themselves of anything, and once they made up their minds about right and wrong the only thing that got through their skulls was lead. “We’ll keep an eye out for Father Joao.” Ryan did a little sign language of his own. He pointed at Ago and Vava, pointed at the church and shrugged. Ago and Vava both nodded and pulled out little hand-carved wooden crosses from beneath their tunics. Ryan refrained from rolling his eye. “They’re book pounders, Doc.”
“I believe they are illiterate, but I take your meaning. However, I would point out that they seem to be book pounders who are afraid of their priest,” Doc countered, “and willing to help strangers not of their faith.”
“Yeah, there’s that.” Ryan unslung his longblaster and slowly began to circle the base of the hill. He found a little cottage nestled up against the back of the church. Unlike the villager huts, the cottage was of plank and beam construction with a shingled roof and glass windows. No smoke came from the chimney and the windows were dark. Ryan approached the cottage from the side and peered in one of the windows. It consisted of a single, sparsely furnished room. A cross hung over a simple rope bed in one corner and a small desk, an armoire and the fireplace filled the others. He beckoned, and Doc and the two islanders followed. Ryan rounded the cottage and came to a shed. There was no lock on it and inside were some axes, hatches, shovels, coils of rope, hand tools and several buckets of different size nails.
“Doc, ask them where Father Joao is.”
Doc asked and Ago and Vava pointed toward the sea and the bigger island out in the distance. Doc pondered. “Well, by my reckoning today is Tuesday. If the priest ministers to these people but prefers to live on the main island, and they are on the same calendar as us, and still practicing Catholicism, then he may not be back until Friday for Mass.”
Ryan nodded to himself. With Captain Roque’s boat lost at sea with all hands and Father Joao not expected back until Friday, they had a little time. He looked at the Gothic building and the two islanders. “You think they’re going to get angry at us if we go in?”
“I suspect not,” Doc replied.
Ryan went to the front of the church and unlatched the gate. He kept his eye on the stone muties over the lintel and pushed open the high, narrow double doors. The inside was dim and shot through with shafts of light coming from the high narrow windows. It smelled vaguely of incense and beeswax. Two rows of benches led to the altar. On the wall above it was a crucifix and below it the painting of a man. The man sat back in an ornate chair. He was as chill pale as Roque and his crew, with aristocratic features, his long black hair shot through with silver, and he was dressed all in black clothing. He had the same kind of black eyes as a shark or a stickie, and they seemed to follow you wherever you went in the room.
Doc pointed at the painting. Ago, Vava and Boo hovered in the doorway. Vava nodded and said, “Barat.”
Doc grunted unhappily. “I believe I detect something of a theocracy going on in these islands.”
Ryan swept the rest of the church. There were a couple of antechambers. One was full of barrels and sacks of supplies. The other led to an empty cell with iron bars and chains on the wall. Ryan came back and stepped past Ago and Vava. “Wait here.”
Ryan went to the shed and ladened himself with axes, hatches, saws, rope and hammer and nails. He came back and handed a hatchet to Doc. Doc looked at the implement. “And what is this for?”
“The skiff is useless.” Ryan surveyed the church. “But barrels and benches would make a decent raft.”
Doc sighed as he glanced around the ancient Gothic architecture and the antique appurtenances. “Yes.”
“We don’t have time to go chopping down trees.” Ryan’s eye narrowed. “You got a problem with busting up a church, Doc?”
“Well, I was taught men’s highest spiritual goal was to establish truth, righteousness and love in the world.” Doc smiled wryly. “Nevertheless, I believe I can say without fear of contradiction that few things would have pleased several of my Oxford companions more than to observe their learned colleague taking an ax to a Papist establishment.” Doc hefted his hatchet. “Lay on, Macduff.”
“We need bench seats, four of them to make a square. We nail them together and then lash a barrel beneath each one. We’ll take the oars from the skiff and chop them down to paddles.”
“As sensible a plan as any,” Doc agreed. “I will take the saw and try to carve us a rudder.”
Ago and Vava gasped as Ryan’s first ax stroke kneecapped the closest pew, but they made no move to stop them or to run away. Ryan and Doc worked throughout the day. They nailed together four lengths of pew and bound them with rope. One of the barrels in the storeroom was filled with water, one with wine and two with oil that Doc said came from a whale. The wine was thin and sour, but they emptied it last and Doc dosed himself liberally from it as they worked. The wine and the exertion brought color to his cheeks and he worked with a will. Vava left and came back with dried meat and an earthen pot of goat curds. Ago watched almost unblinkingly as the hours passed and the grand construction came together. Ryan and Doc lashed the last barrel in place and surveyed their handiwork. They had a four-foot by four-foot square supported by barrels at each corner and had nailed a pair of planks across the square to sit on while they paddled. Doc had sawn out a bench back into a rough fin that they roped in place to form a rudder.
Ryan wiped his brow on his forearm. “Doc, tell Vava to go get the oars from the skiff. Tell Ago we’re going to sail for the big island at sunset and that we need four men to help us carry down the raft and launch it.”
Doc went through some complicated hand signals.
Ago suddenly seized Ryan’s wrist and shook his head as he spoke in rapid-fire Portuguese. Only the desperate earnestness in the young man’s face kept Ryan from snapping Ago’s arm at the elbow. “Doc?” Ryan said quietly. “Tell Ago to let go.”
Doc spoke a few words and pointed at Ryan’s wrist. Ago reddened in sudden shame and stepped back, looking at his feet. Ryan took pity on the young man and clapped him on the shoulder with his left hand. “Tell him it’s all right. Ask him what’s wrong.”
Doc and Ago had a very long conversation that didn’t seem to go anywhere fast. Ago was trying to get something complicated across, and hand gestures and common verb roots weren’t enough. Ryan sighed. “Doc you get anything out of all that?”
“Only a few basic concepts,” Doc admitted.
“Such as?”
“There is danger on the big island.”
“Figured that.” Ryan nodded. “Anything else?”
Doc frowned unhappily. “It is possible I am misinterpreting.”
“Best guess, Doc.”
“Ago wants us to go to the big island during the day.”
Ryan shook his head. “They’ll see us coming.”
“I tried to explain that to him. But when he learned our plan was to make landfall at night? That was when he grabbed your arm.”
Ryan was fairly sure Ago had their best interests at heart, but he was loathe to give up the element of surprise. “Can you figure out why?”
“He has been trying to tell me, but he is using words that have no classical Latin base to tell me.” Doc shook his head in failure. “I am sorry to say that Latin is a dead language. Ago’s Portuguese on the other hand is a living, breathing entity that has continued to grow and evolve to this day. The two languages were far apart in my time and have only grown further in the intervening centuries. There is danger on the big island, but the day is safer, of that I am fairly sure. The nature of this danger I cannot determine, though it is clear Baron Barat and Father Joao are to be feared regardless.”
Ryan gave Doc a long hard look. The scholar had been more lucid for the past couple of days than Ryan could remember. Maybe the sea air was doing him good, or being more useful than usual was helping him focus, as well. “What do you think?”
Doc shrugged. “These people have shown us nothing but kindness and hospitality. They were also clearly willing to hide us, quite possibly at risk to themselves. Ago is adamant, we must not go to the island at night.”
“Fireblast.” Ryan wanted to go now. He had a very grim feeling that time wasn’t on their side. But he could tell that Doc needed rest. Ryan felt the ache of his own wounds. If they left now there wouldn’t be much left of them to meet whatever awaited on the big isle. “Fine, we leave at first light, but under one condition.”
Doc blinked. “What would that be?”
The die was cast. “You’re a baron until I tell you different.”
J.B.’S HEAD SHOT UP as the comp in the control room chimed. He was sitting guard duty while the rest of the party slept and almost didn’t hear it over the moans, coos and shrieks of the stickies as they pressed themselves against the door and reached for him. He’d chilled two of the muties with head shots as they had tried the contortionist routine; but luckily full-body dislocation didn’t appear to be a universal stickie skill set, at least not yet. He perked an ear and realized the comp was no longer peeping. “Jak!” J.B. called. “Watch the door.”
Jak was awake, on-station with Colt Python drawn in an eyeblink.
Krysty and Mildred roused themselves wearily as J.B. examined the comp screen. Mildred pushed at her face sleepily. “What’s up?”
“The mat-trans.” Data no longer scrolled down the screen. J.B. checked his chron and then the comp screen again. “It’s been seventy-two hours. I’m pretty sure to the second. I’m thinking the mat-trans is enabled again.”
Krysty leaped to her feet. “We’re out of here.” She shouted into the corridor “Jak! We’re leaving!”
Jak trotted into the control room. Krysty surveyed her friends. “We leave the food and half the water we got here. There’s a chance there’ll be supplies on the other side. Here there’s none, and if J.B.’s right on the timer, anyone left behind will have another three days before the mat-trans cycles again.”
The party put down their canteens, water bottles and stacked their meager store of provisions on the main console of the control room. One by one they filed past and took their seats on the mat-trans floor. Krysty went and put her hand on the lever. Ryan was always the last man in. He was always the one to pull the lever and the first one to step out of the chamber. Watching him do it had always given Krysty confidence. She felt very nervous now but kept it off her face. “Everyone ready?”
J.B. nodded. “Let’s go.”
Krysty shut the door and quickly sat on the floor disk as a mist began to fill the chamber. The lights began to flicker and the sucking darkness started to pull her in into oblivion. Krysty screamed in rage rather than fear this time as the lightning suddenly sledgehammered behind her eyes. She wasn’t going to meet Ryan. Krysty screamed on in agony as she felt the savage wrenching for the second time as the universe seemed to pull every last fiber of her being in a separate direction but stopped just short of ripping her apart.
Krysty collapsed face-first into a puddle of her own bile and lay shuddering for long moments. Locks of her mutant hair snapped and twisted like beheaded snakes. Her battered brain knew she had been left behind again and she was still in the same redoubt. Instinct curled her fingers around the grips of her snub-nosed blaster. She pushed herself to her hands and knees and another wave of nausea ran its course through her. A clinical part of her noted dark, internal blood mixed in with the mess that had nothing to do with her bleeding nose. J.B. lay a few feet away, clutching his Uzi like an anchor as he was racked by his own gastrointestinal fireworks. Krysty could have wept.
Jak and Mildred were gone.
Krysty reeled onto her knees and mentally bucked herself up as she stood. Her hand shook as she pressed the lever and the chamber door hissed open. The comp was peeping. Data was scrolling. The supplies were still there. The corridor outside echoed with the sounds of besieging stickies.
Three more days.
Chapter Five
Ryan’s broken rib stabbed and sawed at his side with each stroke of the oar. The sea was calm and the current slight, but they were still pushing a craft shaped like a brick across several klicks of open ocean. Doc was clearly no longer invigorated by the call of the sea. Each dip of the paddle was a groan and each return was a wheeze of effort, and Ryan felt his injured and exhausted body falling into the rhythm. The only good news about the journey was the morning fog. The big island was a dark smudge in the distance, and it would take a keen eye to make out the little makeshift raft in the vastness.
“I was on the rowing team…when I attended university…you know,” Doc gasped. “I fear…I have since…lost…my wind.”
“Save your wind for the sea, Doc.” Ryan dug his cut-down oar into the Lantic. “We’re getting close.”
Waves boomed and hissed ahead of them as the ocean met the land. Both men instinctively dug down and dug harder as the big island loomed ahead of them like Leviathan in the fog. Doc suddenly gave a little sigh, and Ryan felt the sea change beneath them, as well. They had passed some invisible barrier in the waters and now rather than fighting the ocean current they were being pulled in by the tide. Ryan had scanned the beachheads the previous late afternoon and seen little in the way of obstacles, but he worried about the rocks and reefs he couldn’t see. “We’re coming in.”
“Indeed…I believe we are.” Doc set his oar aside and took the crude tiller.
The raft slopped and dipped as the waves slapped it, but so far the surf wasn’t bad and Doc began to guide them in. Four barrels set in a square were very difficult to capsize. Despite several stomach-dropping descents down wave faces and being soaked to the skin, they were heading straight for the beach. Rather than rising up and down in booming waves they were suddenly in surf that sizzled like bacon. They gathered speed and Ryan could see the dull yellow sand of the beach ahead of them. “Nice work, Doc. We—”
Both men went flying as one corner of the raft smashed into a sandbar and the little craft went vertical. Ryan’s rib screamed at him as he took a shoulder roll in the surf and came up on his feet with a splash. Doc ate a mouthful of beach and rose spitting and blinking sand from his eyes. Water churned around them as the wave receded. Doc splashed seawater onto his face and spluttered as they slogged up past the water line. “We have made landfall.”
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.”
