Chapter Seventeen

 

 

"Wag's smashed to shit on rocks. Mules all dead. Can only see one body."

 

Jak had shaded his pink eyes against the sun, now setting low on the western horizon. He stood perched on the very edge of the deeply rutted trail, staring into the shadowed drop to the deep ravine on the right.

 

"Who?" Krysty asked as she joined him, her legs feeling oddly stiff, as if her knees had become filled with ice.

 

"Mule skinner. Recognize coat. Was coyotes there but run off when saw me."

 

The bodies of the three men and two horses behind Krysty were also showing signs of having been raided by predators. A pair of raw-necked vultures had flapped reluctantly from the feast as Krysty and the others appeared around the bend in the track, one of them with a long string of gristle and flesh dangling from its yellow, hooked beak.

 

All of the men and both the pinto and the bay had lost their eyes, plucked neatly from swimming sockets. Much of the soft tissue of the men's faces had also gone, rendering them unrecognizable, though it was obvious from their clothes and their builds that none of them was Ryan or Dean.

 

"How long?" J.B. asked, studying the scene of slaughter with a professional interest.

 

Mildred had knelt and slipped her hand inside the collar of the plaid shirt on one of the corpses. "Cold. Several hours. Think that this all is Ryan's work?"

 

Doc had sat on a seat-sized boulder, wiping sweat from his forehead with his kerchief. "Where he walks, death steps in his shadow," he said quietly. "Flowers die and the little children weep in the streets."

 

"For Gaia's sake, shut it, Doc!" Krysty snapped. "Ryan doesn't bring death, but it sure seems to seek him out."

 

He half bowed to her. "Mea culpa, my dear lady. The blame is mine, and you are quite correct. It is just that I am tired, and I had not looked to end the day at the center of a charnel house. And I'm old and foolish."

 

"Going for the sympathy and self-pity vote, Doc?" Mildred asked interestedly. "Not like you. Must still be the effects of the altitude."

 

J.B. and Jak had finished a hasty look around the slaughter scene.

 

"Way I read it," the Armorer began, "and correct me, anyone, if they think I'm wrong. Wag stopped here." He pointed with the muzzle of the Uzi. "Deep ruts. Ambushed. Probably shots fired from cover to stop them. Then there was talk after two men arrived on horseback. Leading a third animal that isn't here. Though there's hoof marks leading up the trail to the east. Must've gotten away."

 

"Can't tell who started it. Ryan or Dean or driver shot pinto through head. Another bullet took him out," Jak said, pointing to one of the corpses. "Wag rolled over that one. Last one chilled was trapped by horse."

 

J.B. nodded at Jak's recreation of the scene, walking to the gouged ruts that showed where the rig had finally toppled off the trail, pointing at the marks.

 

"Shooting spooked the mules. Something like that. Could be the bandits shot Lemuel. Just before it went, you can see two sets of prints. Small ones are Dean's. Stake my life on that. Other marks are probably Ryan jumping for it, landing awkwardly and rolling over. Just here."

 

"And afterward?" Krysty had walked past the bodies of men and beasts. "These are their prints, aren't they? Heading on up the track."

 

Jak joined her, stopping for a quick glance. "No doubt," he said. "Both up and walking good. Almost certain not wounded. Fine."

 

"We should go on a little farther and then find somewhere to camp for the night." The Armorer looked around at the carnage. "Hope we don't find any more corpses."

 

 

 

THE BODIES OF THE GIRL, the old man and the donkey were only a little farther up the trail.

 

The vultures were there again, one of them standing its ground when its fellows flew away, beak jutting out as it squatted on the girl's chest, its crimson eyes glaring at the human invaders.

 

"Fuck you," Mildred said, drawing her Czech target revolver and shooting it through the skull, sending it toppling over in a flapping bunch of feathers.

 

"What in God's name is happening on this benighted mountain?" Doc said. "There is death rampant wherever one looks. What villains committed this crime?"

 

J.B. answered him. "My guess is that these bodies are a little older than the three men and the animals. Way I read it" he peered at the trampled hoof marks and boot prints. "way I read it those three guys did this. Raided the old man and took their funning with the girl. Then they were moving down the trail when they ran into Ryan and Dean and the wag, and found themselves all buying the farm."

 

"Serve them right," Krysty said. "And Ryan and Dean passed by here?"

 

Jak had walked a few steps farther on, checking the ground. "Been hailstorm. Ground marked. But here's Dean walking and over here's Ryan. Both moving up."

 

"Could they not have paused to inter these two wretched cadavers? It is so unseemly and beastly to lie here like discarded rubbish."

 

Mildred had been checking the bodies. "Difficult to be sure, but I put their passing an hour or so before the three men down the trail." She straightened. "The girl was raped and then butchered. You said why not bury them, Doc? Look around. We got bare rock and thin ground cover. Bracken and then the trees. Unless Ryan had been carrying picks and shovels, they could have taken a week over grave digging."

 

The old man blew his nose on his kerchief. "You are correct, my dear Dr. Wyeth. As you so often are."

 

"Why, thank you, Doc."

 

"But it makes scant difference to my sickness of spirit and despair of the soul. To see such scenes makes one realize that Deathlands is damnably well named."

 

 

 

"STAND WHERE YOU ARE and keep your hands away from any of those pretty blasters!"

 

"Do like he says, Dean. And don't make any sudden movements. Stay loose."

 

"Sure, Dad. Think he's from the school?"

 

"Could be."

 

The voice came again from the shadows beneath the blue spruces. "And cut the gabbing."

 

Ryan half turned toward the hidden speaker. "Name's Ryan Cawdor. This is my son, Dean. Come up here to enroll him in the Nicholas Brody School."

 

"Oh yeah?" Mocking laughter echoed from the opposite side of the trail, near where Dean was standing. "You don't have the look of a fond parent, outlander. Do he, Joel?"

 

"He looks to me like a hired killer, Ahab. That's what he looks like to me."

 

"You coming out so we can all get on, or do we stand here all day?"

 

There was a silence after Ryan's angry shout.

 

Far above them a bald-headed eagle circled effortlessly on a thermal. Ryan looked up at it, wishing the standoff could be quickly resolved. He was feeling tired, ready for the possibility of some food and a hot bath.

 

"How old's the kid?"

 

"Eleven."

 

"Where do you come from, stranger?"

 

Ryan waved his hand in a circle. "All around," he replied. "Can we get a move on?"

 

"Now, now," Ahab tutted. "Could be it's all right and we'll escort you to Mr. Brody. Only, you seen the signs?"

 

"Have to be blind to miss them."

 

"Sure. We keep this place tighter than a duck's ass.. Been word about that there's some sort of gang in the region. Farther the far side of Leadville."

 

"Toward Fairplay?" Ryan asked, thinking of the rumors they'd heard about Harmony.

 

"Yeah. You know anythin' about it?"

 

"Like you. Heard the word."

 

After another short silence a man appeared from the trees on Ryan's side, carrying a Browning 71 rifle, the replica of the famous Winchester 71. He was casually dressed in a light blue shirt, and black jeans that were tucked into work boots. He wore a sun-bleached Stetson.

 

Ryan was immediately struck by Ahab's professional air of casual competence.

 

If he was one of the sec men for the school, then it meant Brody ran a tight establishment.

 

"Come on out, Joel. Think we might have us a live one here, after all."

 

The screen of scrubby bushes parted and the other guard appeared, similarly uniformed, carrying an unidentifiable remake rifle.

 

"You best give us your blasters What did you say your name was?"

 

"Ryan Cawdor. My son, Dean. And I don't give up my blasters to anybody."

 

Joel and Ahab exchanged glances, both of them obviously trying to calculate the odds on pushing the issue, both deciding that the odds weren't that great in their favor.

 

Ahab nodded and grinned. "Guess this wouldn't happen if you weren't genuine. Best come along with us, Mr. Cawdor. And you, Dean, and you can meet up with Mr. Brody. He's always pleased to welcome new pupils, isn't he, Joel?"

 

"Sure is. Yeah, he sure is."

 

 

 

DOC HAD ANOTHER VIOLENT nosebleed that brought their day to a premature end only a short distance beyond the bodies of the old man and the girl.

 

There was a pocket of old, tired snow not far off the trail, and Mildred used some of it, packed into the swallow's-eye kerchief, to staunch the flow. But Doc was knocked back by the incident, sitting and resting his back against a weathered tree, seeming dizzy and disorientated.

 

"Little Rachel once had a bad nosebleed. Was it El Paso? Or Carlsbad? I disremember the place, but there was a beautiful swimming pool, the water limpid and sparkling. My dearest daughter was about to plunge in when I noticed that her neck, chest and stomach were covered in blood. For a moment my heart stopped in midbeat until I realized it was only from her adorable little pixie nose. She jumped in and the blood clouded the water, until I couldn't see her at all. Not at all."

 

Mildred was sitting with him while J.B., Jak and Krysty scavenged for wood for a fire.

 

She held his hand, feeling him trembling. "Be fine soon, Doc. Altitude is a son of a bitch to get used to. Soon have a blaze going and you can relax. Eat some fruit. Catch up on sleep. You'll wake up tomorrow like a new man."

 

He looked at her, his pale blue eyes unusually solemn. "That is not what I wish for, Mildred. I beg you not to tell the others. Communicable despair, don't you know? But most nights I go to bed, I pray the Lord my soul to take."

 

"I don't get you, Doc."

 

"There is not a night of my life that I don't wish to be taken in my sleep. So that I can rejoin my beloved Emily and my two little dear ones. But every morning I awake and it is all the same. I am here and now, and they are there and gone."

 

"I sometimes feel the same about my folks, Doc. The thought that everyone I ever knew has been dead for at least twenty or thirty years. Most of them would have died in the nukecaust, anyway. But I get over grieving." She paused. "Most of the time."

 

"I try to send my poor prayers across time and space to Emily," Doc said shakily. "Tell her that the breeze she feels is my breath upon her cheek. Tell her that I am waiting to join her. Not to grieve me gone. But it's all"

 

His mind wandered again, and the sentence flowed away in the late-afternoon sunlight.

 

 

 

"THERE IT IS."

 

An area of forest had been cleared and they had passed through cultivated fields, some with horses and cattle, one with a large herd of pigs. Then they came upon a massive vegetable garden that had to have covered twenty acres.

 

And beyond it, set on a rise in the ground alongside a crystal lake, was the school.

 

"Looks like a fort, Dad," Dean observed.

 

"That's because it is a fort, young fellow," Ahab said. "Self-contained with its own well and storerooms. We could withstand a siege for a month or more."

 

The school looked as if it had originally been a stone farmhouse, then had been extended with some concrete blocks, the whole thing finally covered in fresh adobe. There were slits for rifles and heavy shutters of steel that could be closed quickly and bolted from the inside.

 

A large flagpole was set in the center of a courtyard out front, with a flag flying from it.

 

"That's not the Stars and Bars, is it?" Ryan asked, shading his eye.

 

"Stars and Stripes, Dad." Dean grinned. "Even I know that, and I haven't even started at school yet."

 

A few figures worked out in the fields, a couple of them rounding up some goats. But the main building seemed completely deserted.

 

"Where are the children?" Ryan asked.

 

"Most at lessons in the classrooms," Ahab replied. "This time of day."

 

"Those are Mr. Brody's students, as well," Joel said, pointing with his rifle. "He believes in some active outdoor work to keep the body and mind both healthy."

 

"Don't fancy shoveling goat shit, Dad," Dean muttered. "Not what I call learning."

 

"You do what Mr. Brody tells you to do, son. He knows best about education."

 

"He sure does, Mr. Cawdor," Joel agreed. "And that goes for everyone who works here."

 

"But you'll be seeing all of that for yourselves," Ahab said.

 

"Looking forward to that, aren't we, Dean?" He saw that the boy was staring at the range of buildings. "Aren't we, Dean?"

 

"Oh, yeah. Sure are, Dad. Sure are."