Chapter Twelve

"A deserted house."
"Where?"
"On the edge of the ville."
"Who knows we're here?"
"Nobody."
"Sure nobody saw us?"
"I'm sure."
"Feels cold and damp."
"It is. But most of the roof is on, and it looks like someone lived here for a while. Some of the broken windows have been shuttered, and the back and side doors have both been barricaded. There's remains of a fire."
"Don't light it!"
J.B. patted him on the arm. "Relax a bit, Ryan. We aren't virgin stupes."
"Yeah, I know that" There was a long, long silence between the two old friends. "Just that"
"I know, Ryan."
"Mildred there?"
"Up the stairs. Keeping watch."
"How about food?"
The Armorer cleared his throat. "Jak and Dean are going out scavenging a little later."
"Tell them to be careful and" He laughed quietly. "Being blind makes you stupid," he said. "Course they'll be careful. What's the time?"
J.B. rolled his sleeve back to check his wrist chron. "Closing in on three, near as I can figure it. Light's still good."
"Not for me." Ryan sighed. "Fireblast! Swore I wouldn't say that kind of shit, and here I am pouring it out all the rad-damned time."
He heard feet moving down the stairs, recognizing the footfalls as Mildred's.
She entered the room where he was lying on an old mattress that smelled of cat piss.
"How's it going, Ryan?"
"Like you'd expect."
"Tough?"
"Yeah."
"How's the eye feel?"
He was aware that she had knelt by him, studying him. It accentuated the feeling of helplessness, and he half turned his face away from her.
"Still sort of burns."
"No sight?"
"Kind of speckling lights, like miniature jewels scattered on a black rug. But they keep moving. Can't focus on them. Can't see a bastard thing."
"Freak accident," she said.
Ryan didn't know that his son was also in the room. The boy had been keeping very still and silent. "Paid the bastards for doing it, Dad."
"I know."
Despite the pain from the blow on the head and the white agony of his damaged eye, Ryan's combat reflexes were still functioning in the totem shack.
He'd heard the scream from Krysty, riding on the heels of the explosion from the flintlock pistol; the angry, freaked voice of the woman, crying out against her husband; the unmistakable thunk of one of Jak's leaf-bladed throwing knives finding its target in the throat of Baptiste, the old man; the sharp crack of the Uzi, firing a single round; a yell of shock and pain and the muffled sound of the sawed-down, filthy shotgun; blood fountaining from the severed carotid artery in Baptiste's neck, pattering on the greasy floorboards; the woman going down, kicking and thrashing, trying to scream, but the 9 mm bullet had done its work, striking her in the upper chest, the angle of the round drilling through both lungs. She died quickly, drowning in her own blood.
After that, Ryan remembered only the silence, for what seemed an eternity.
Then the disbelieving realization of the disaster that had struck at him.


MILDRED HAD EXAMINED HIM with a scrupulous care, giving a running commentary as she did, so that he knew exactly what the damage was.
"Skin blackened and scorched around the eye. Extensive burning of the hairs on the eyebrow and the lashes. Pitting with some powder impregnation to outer surface of the forehead and the top of the nose, as well as all around the eye and down onto the cheek. All of this is superficial and gives absolutely no cause for medical concern, though it should be carefully and thoroughly cleansed as soon as possible."
That had been the end of the good news.
Ryan had picked up on the change in the doctor's voice as she examined the damage to the eye itself.
"Not so good. The impact from the blast from the flash in the pan has obviously been serious. The lid of the eye is badly swollen and tender. Until this has subsided it's impossible to give a definite diagnosis. Also, I don't have any proper ophthalmic instruments to check deep damage. But I think there's scarring of the cornea and also injury to the surface of the eye."
"You mean I'm fucking blind!"
"Yes." She squeezed his hand. "No point in bullshitting you, Ryan."
"For good?"
Mildred hadn't answered him for a while, and Ryan could almost feel her gathering herself together. "I truly can't tell you."
"But?"
"It was a bad burn, and it was very close to your good eye. If only you'd been facing the other way."
"Then I'd have needed a new patch."
"Right. Truth is, the odds aren't good."
"But there are odds?"
"There's always odds, Ryan."
"Tell me what they are. Fifty-fifty? Sixty-forty? Ninety-ten? What?"
He had heard her shaking her head. "Not like that. This sort of injury sometimes gets better as the eye slowly heals itself. If the damage is too deep, then then it doesn't ever get any better."
"How long before we know?"
"About a week? If your sight's recovering by then If not, then it likely won't come back at all."
"Thanks." He still held her hand, squeezing it and holding it tight.


"IS IT NIGHT?"
Krysty had been sitting by Ryan, watching while he fell into a deep sleep, his body trying to patch itself up after the clinical shock.
"Nearly, lover. How's it feel?"
Ryan sat up, aware of how totally helpless he was. Even the act of moving brought a kind of vertigo that made his head swim. He reached out, grabbing at Krysty's shoulder, making her gasp with pain.
"Not so hard!"
"Sorry. Just trying I want to say it right now, and you can tell everyone else. Don't keep asking me how I feel. I feel like I'm blind . If I get any fucking hint that my sight might be sneaking back, then you'll all know about it. Until then I'd rather not get asked."
Krysty didn't respond.
Time drifted by, the silence finally broken by Ryan.
"Smell burning."
"Jak went back to the store with Doc a half hour ago. Said he was going to fire it. Thought that it would be less suspicious if any of the locals went there and found the corpses. Fire covers it all up."
"Good idea. I should've thought of that."
"There's no sign of any life. This place is up a road off the main drag of the ville. Forde spotted it from the height of the wag seat. The trail was overgrown, and we dragged some brush across it."
Doc spoke, making Ryan start. "So, we have closed off the road through the woods, and now there is no road through the woods."
"Made me jump, Doc. Didn't hear you come in. Mebbe the blast of that flintlock made me deaf as well as blind."
"I have been here for some little time. There is an old chaise lounge that fitted itself to my angular frame with surprisingly small discomfort. From its design and fabric I suspect that it might be almost as old as me."
"Anyone carried out a recce of the ville?"
Krysty shook her head automatically, then realized how pointless that was. "No, not yet, lover. Soon as it's dark, then Dean and"
"You already told me that," Ryan said.
He lay down and within a couple of minutes had dropped off to sleep.


"EASY AS TAKING small jack from a young child," Dean boasted.
He and Jak had returned an hour after dark, bringing two gunnysacks loaded with food and drink. They unloaded them together in the room where Ryan lay in his darkness, the boy giving his father a running commentary on their expedition and its results.
"Bramton's oddest ville I ever saw. Only just gone dusk, but it's locked up tighter than a gaudy slut's heart. Not a place that wasn't locked and bolted, and only masked lamps showing through gaps in their drapes."
Jak supported him. "Almost taste fear."
"But no guards?" Ryan asked, wrinkling his forehead as he tried to puzzle it out.
"Not one. Also, dogs shut up in houses and barns. Few scented us and began barking. Not soul showed nose out doors."
"Fires?"
"Indoors," the albino replied.
"Then how did you get the food and stuff?"
"Mostly in sheds out back. Brain-dead lemming could've broken locks."
Dean recited what they'd taken.
"Two chickens, ready-plucked. Three parts of a big smoked ham. Some dried fish. Jars of preserves. Cherry and strawberry. Boysenberry."
Mildred took it from the boy. "I think that I prefer boysenberry more than any ordinary jam," she said, waiting for a moment as if she expected a response from the others. But none came. "Let it lie," she muttered.
"And there's a couple of jugs of home-brew beer and one of whiskey," Dean said.
"Bread, cheese and crock-salted butter. Milk. Fruit. Apples and pears."
"Right feast," J.B. said. "You did well."
"Yeah," Ryan agreed, a beat late. "Good. Real good."


EATING HAD BEEN a more humiliating experience than Ryan had imagined. Despite his efforts, with everyone else studiously ignoring his clumsiness, he finally had to give in and ask Krysty to help him.
"No sweat, lover. You want me to just cut it up and leave you to it?"
"No," he replied, almost choking on his own voice. "Even with a spoon I still can't get a fucking handle on it. Sort of slips away." He took a deep breath. "Can you feed me, Krysty?"
"Sure."
"Just for tonight. I'll get the hang of it in the end, I guess. But for now"


KRYSTY HAD LED HIM by the hand out back to where the bathroom still stood. There was a copper-sheathed rain barrel, and she used an old pan to scoop up some of the water, carefully washing his food-splattered face with it, avoiding the burned part around his right eye.
"Messy eater," he said.
"You wouldn't know it now. There. Clean and smart again. Go back inside?"
"Not yet."
"Want to catch some fresh air?"
"Yeah. Feels overcast."
Krysty looked up at the cloudless sky, seeing the sprinkling of bright stars. "You're right," she said.
"Dull and dismal. Ten-tenths cloud cover. Looks like it might rain later."
Ryan smiled for the first time since the blinding. "I could feel it."
"Stay awhile longer?"
"I need a piss."
"Sure. Least you don't need me for that. Though I'd be very happy to grab hold and"
"Just point me away from anything, lover. Don't want to do it on my boots."
"Right." She watched him in the filtered moonlight.
"You can see all right? In the dark?" he asked.
"Just about. Go ahead."
Ryan did it safely, the stream of liquid, silver-black in the moon, splashing against the trunk of a tilted alder, running into the dirt.


RYAN FELL ASLEEP QUICKLY, his body wanting to close down and shut off the horrors of one of the worst days of his life. Krysty had placed their mattress in the upstairs back room. J.B. and Mildred were sleeping in the next room, while Doc, Jak and Dean each had an attic. Johannes Forde had elected to sleep in his wag in the overgrown cottage garden.
The Armorer had discussed with Ryan whether he thought they needed a watch placed. But it was agreed that, as the house was well hidden from the rest of the ville of Bramton, they could reasonably take a chance and go without.
Ryan dreamed that he could see.
He had once known a severely disabled young woman who told him that she dreamed herself whole and well, running through fields of flowers. And she described the cold chill of the waking to grim reality.
He had never quite appreciated the sheer deathly impact of that.
It felt like the small hours and he nudged Krysty, his eye open, seeing only blackness.
"Is there moonlight?" he whispered.
"Yes, there is, lover." A note of hope entered her voice. "Can you see it?"
"No." He turned over and tried to get back to sleep.