Chapter Seven

The campfire crackled brightly, sending a curling pillar of gray-white smoke circling into the evening air, filling the stillness with the scent of apple and cherry wood. An old black caldron hung on a tripod in the heart of the flames, its contents steaming and bubbling.
The fight with the muties had been only a hundred paces away from an overgrown two-lane blacktop that ran roughly from east to west. Alongside it were the remnants of an orchard, with fallen trees everywhere.
Johannes Forde had led them to it, through a screen of alders to where his wag waited, a pair of bay mares chewing quietly at the long grass. His name was emblazoned on the side of the canvas, advertising his trade Maker of Films for Every Occasion.
A rare occupation in Deathlands.
He explained while they waited for the gator stew to cook that he had found an enormous cache of 16 mm cameras with lenses and miles of film stock, with several projectors and screens.
"It was in a tumbled barn, a country mile or so to the south of old Interstate 20, a good distance north of us here, in a small town that no longer had a name. Streets of tumbled tar-paper shotgun shacks. Several houses looked like they'd once belonged to the pre-dark wealthy."
He got up and stirred at the stew with a ladle. The mix of vegetables and white strips of meat was simmering gently, its delicious aroma rising from the pot.
"You have old films?" Mildred asked. "The big stars like Clint and Kevin and Macaulay and Claudia?"
Forde shook his head, the shadows playing across the sharp planes of his cheeks, dancing off the bright blue eyes. "No, Dr. Wyeth. Most of that had been converted to video, and it's almost impossible to find working players these days. Last vid I saw that was nearly complete was" He calculated on his fingers, lips moving. "Must be fifteen years ago, up near Richmond. It had some wonderful stars in it. Jack Nicholson. Bruce Bern. Harry Dean Stanton. I have read much on the ancient movies, and they were three of the finest. About a gang of bikers. Never knew the title as the lead ten minutes was missing, but I can lay my hand on my heart and say without hesitation that it was one of the worst movies that I have ever seen."
"You actually make what used to be called 'home movies,' do you?" Doc asked.
"Yes, I do. I still have dozens of hours of film left and the equipment for developing and editing and projecting them."
"Who pays?" Ryan asked, picking at his teeth with a long thorn off of a wild brier rose. "Barons from villes?"
"Yes."
Doc snorted. "Those who can afford the jack for it. Like the painters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Most of them did dull portraits of even duller people. The nobs. Those who could afford the fees."
Forde nodded at the old man. "Good to meet up with someone with a passable education. All of you got reading and writing?" Everyone nodded. "That's fine to know. Average ville has about a dozen readers and writers and counters. If that. Some places there's only the baron and his family. And their tame priests."
"You got films we can see?" Jak asked.
"Guess so. Y'all be interested in my doing some filming of you? Won't cost much. Or we can trade. See some of the finest blasters I ever laid eyes on."
"Not bad weapons yourself," J.B. commented. "Looks like you've had them pair of matched Navy Colts rechambered for a .38."
"Right. Sharp eyes, Mr. Dix. Would weaponry be your specialty, by any chance?"
"It would."
"And you're in the trading and the traveling line, you say?" The question was asked by Forde with a wry grin that showed his disbelief without actually calling Ryan's short explanation into doubt.
"That's what we say." Ryan stared at him, waiting until the elegant stranger dropped his gaze. "Anything beyond that falls into the box marked Our Business."
Forde shrugged, holding out his hands like a traveling huckster. "Fine, fine. Forgive me for asking. Never been down this part of the world before. Sorry if I gave offense."
Jak answered his apology. "Bayou folks keep open eyes and closed mouths."
Forde nodded. "I understand, Mr. Lauren."
"Call me Jak."
"Of course. And I am Johannes" He paused a long moment. "To my friends."
"Good to meet you" Ryan allowed his pause to stretch to more than match Forde's. "Johannes."
The filmmaker laughed. "I'm sure that the stew's ready for eatin' right now. Let's get to it."


JOHANNES FORD WAS a first-rate cook. The alligator tasted like the finest corn-fed chicken, tender and flavorsome. The mix of vegetables, including potatoes, collard greens and delicious mashed rutabagas, was scented with a variety of herbs and spices, including some nutmeg that Forde measured out of a tiny glass vial as carefully as if it had been gold dust.
"Can't get it these days," he said. "Always on the lookout for a predark grocer's, but I haven't found one untouched for six years. And I've been looking real hard."
"Unusual to find a man who likes cooking," Krysty commented, "and who's good at it."
"Lady, I never had the time," Ryan replied, offering his earthenware dish for a second helping. "Though I gotta admit it's good."
Forde was leaning his back against one of the big wag wheels, lighting up a small black cigar. He blew a smoke ring, sighing. "Life is good at times like this. To meet fellow outlanders and travelers. Men and women who know the main roads and the thin blue highways of Deathlands."
"How long've you been riding along the black-tops?" J.B. asked.
"I first saw the light of day in New Haven. Poppa was a fisherman. Caught the last boat west when a giant devil crab bit him in half. I was let me see I was about twelve when that happened. Momma liked company, after he was gone. Mebbe before, as well. Mate company. Her only son found himself in the way, so he lit out running and never stopped. That'll be twenty-five years ago come the equinox."
"And you've been doing this filming all this time?" Mildred asked.
"Lord save you, no. It was only a few years ago that I stumbled upon the film making material that has been my salvation. Before that I was lost and godless, a man who lived by the turn of a card or the roll of a dice." He paused, blowing another perfect smoke ring. "Or the quickness of my finger on the trigger. Surviving was mistakes not made."
Ryan nodded understandingly. "And you got hopes of doing some filming in the villes around here?"
"That's the idea, friend Cawdor. Any of you know this part of the world? Be there monsters here?"
"There be monsters everywhere," Doc replied. "And most of them walk tall on two feet."
"Very true. By God, but that's true."
Jak cleared his throat. "I was borned ways from here. Don't know any big villes. No powerful barons. Not since Tourment bought farm."
Forde extinguished his cigar in the dirt, making sure it was properly, safely out. "Never heard of the man. All I heard of is of a big old house close by. Family lives there and they have some power over their neighbors." He tugged at his neat beard. "But it was odd strange."
"What?" Dean asked.
"Strange, the behavior of most of the folks that told me on the road. Warned me away, you might say. Wouldn't meet my eyes. Stared at their boots like they might find the mystery of the ages writ there. I'd have said they were scared."
"They say what they were scared of?" Jak looked around at the circle of darkness that surrounded their fire. Twice they'd seen the golden eyes of some nocturnal predator glinting back at them, but the menace had passed on.
"No. One old woman crossed herself like this." Forde demonstrated, using small pecking gestures. "Said to sleep with my windows closed and to face the north."
"You know what she meant?" Ryan was considering whether a third helping of the stew would be excessive, consoling himself with the thought that it would probably go to waste if it wasn't all eaten. He ladled out another generous helping.
Forde shook his head, the flowing hair, the color of Kansas summer wheat, catching the red glints of the flames and reflecting them, as though his skull were covered in a dancing array of tiny fireflies.
"No idea. I've come across isolated communities where they were frightened of shadows. Frightened by seeing three magpies together in a field. Seeing a ginger cat turn twice around, widdershins. Broken a mirror or spilled fresh-boiled milk. Deathlands is filled with taboos and totems, isn't it?"
Ryan nodded. "Most of them are aimed at outlanders. Watch out for blacks or redheads or white hairs or tall or short or fat or thin. Anyone who looks kind of different from other people. That's the fear."
"Deviation from the norm," Doc stated in his deepest voice.
"I'm heading for the ville tomorrow," Forde said. "You're more than welcome to come along."
"Know its name?" Jak asked.
"I believe" He tugged once more at his goatee. "Bramton, I think."
"Not know it," the albino teenager said. "Most my early life didn't go far from home. Must be hundred villes around bayous don't know."
"We could walk along with you." Ryan looked around the circle of companions. "Nobody vote against that? No? Fine. Yeah, Johannes, we'll come to Bramton with you."


BEFORE RETIRING for the night Forde delved inside his wag and emerged red faced and triumphant, flourishing a dusty bottle. "This will aid sleep and bring the sweetest of dreams to us all."
"What is it?" J.B. asked. "Some kind of home brew?"
"Bathtub hooch," Doc suggested.
"Predark gin," Mildred added. "Used to come in earthenware bottles like that one."
Forde swung himself off the wag's tail, grinning broadly. "Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Zero from ten for all of you. I would stake a mile of 16mm film that none of you has ever sampled anything like it."
"What?" Ryan took the bottle from the stranger, wiping at it with his sleeve, discovering that it lacked any sort of label. "We give up."
"Samphire liqueur," Forde said.
"Never heard of it," Dean told him. "You greasing our wheels, mister?"
"Samphire is a sort of herb," Doc explained. "The name originally came from France in old Europe, a corruption of the herb of Saint Pierre. I have never heard of anyone making a drink from it." He licked his lips. "But if it complements your cooking, friend Forde, then it should hit the spot."
The man was sitting down again, cross-legged, working with an antique Swiss Army knife, hacking away some metallic foil around the cork.
"Ah, there. Now, care is needed. I have known corks to break in the neck of the bottle and Ah, here it comes."
There was a faint popping sound, and the air filled with an elusive and delicious aroma.
Another journey into the back of the looming wag brought a number of small shot glasses, emblazoned with the name of Stovepipe Wells. Forde handed them around the group, glancing at Ryan before offering one to Dean.
"Sure. Small drink never harmed nobody," Ryan said.
"Anybody, lover. Never harmed anybody." Krysty shook her head. "How can you expect the lad to ever learn anything when you set him such a poor example?"
"Sorry. I reckon Dean should be even more pleased at the chance of getting himself some good learning. Specially when he sees the problems his old man has."
Forde poured out eight measures of the samphire liqueur. "I'd like to propose a toast," he said, lifting the shot glass. "To new friends that might one day become old friends."
"I'll drink to that," Doc responded, sipping at the dark green liquor. "By the Three Kennedys! But that is a taste of paradise. The flavor of tropical ice overlaid with arctic fire."
"Prettily put," Forde said. "I was taught the secret of preparing the samphire by a wise old woman who lived up on the high plains. Only a dozen miles from the scene of the Little Bighorn battlefield."
"The place where the ghosts walk in the midday sun," Doc said, holding out his glass for a refill.
"It's delicious," Mildred said. "Got a fresh tang to it."
"Burns when it starts getting down into your belly." Dean finished the contents of his shot glass, shaking his head at the offer of a top-up from Johannes Forde.
"Can we see some films tomorrow?" J.B. asked, also rejecting a second glass of the richly scented liqueur.
"Don't see why not. Fact is, you can see them better in the darkness."
Krysty glanced sideways at Ryan. "How about it, lover? Couldn't we ?"
"I don't think so. Been a tiring day, what with the muties and all. Could be a big day tomorrow, visiting a strange ville. Specially one with a reputation. Best we all get some sleep now. Mebbe see the vids tomorrow."
"They're films, not vids, friend Cawdor," Forde said. "Common mistake."
"Bed sounds good." J.B. yawned even as he said that, putting out a hand to touch Mildred affectionately on the arm. "How about you?"
"Yeah, John. Least the weather's decent."
"If any of you would like to use the bed of the wag ?" Forde offered.
But they all agreed to sleep in the open, at the center of the circle of nodding trees. Ryan considered placing a watch, but there didn't seem to be any feeling of danger.
He slept dreamlessly.