Chapter Thirty-Six

 

 

Krysty had insisted on going straight to the armawag, avoiding any kind of contact with the people of Harmony, who had seen their ville turned into a bloody abattoir.

 

"There must be folks you know," Ryan protested. "Surely you could just see them?"

 

"No."

 

"But they must realize that we have saved their homes and their families from probable death," Doc said.

 

"The whole ville's running with blood." Krysty was on the verge of tears. "I told you, all the ones I loved are dead and gone. Or, like Mother Sonja, just plain disappeared. There's nothing left here for me."

 

And she climbed into the armawag and waited for the others to join her.

 

 

 

RYAN TRIED TO COPE with the folks who flooded out of their houses, gaping at the dozens of corpses, unable to believe that the shadow of the murderous gang had been lifted from them. Their leader appeared to be Richard Thompson, brother of the murdered sheriff, and his pleas for them to stay a few days were echoed by virtually the whole ville.

 

Ryan refused as politely as he could. "You don't know how it'll be. Innocent people have been harmed here and hereabouts, and the time'll come when you'll all resent us almost as much as the gang of murderers."

 

"No, I assure you that"

 

Ryan shook his head. "Guess we're a bit like the wind that blows through and cleans away the bad things. You won't want to be reminded of us."

 

"Someone said they saw little Krysty Wroth, the daughter of Mother Sonja, along with"

 

Ryan held up his hand. "We have to go and you have dead to bury and tears to shed."

 

With that he turned his back and quickly strode toward the alley, where he could hear the small armawag was already warmed up and ready.

 

"Take her away, J.B.," he said as soon as he'd squeezed into the cramped interior. He pulled the steel hatch closed, shutting out the noise of shouting.

 

The engine revved, coughing blue gray fumes into the sunny morning. The Armorer engaged first gear and the vehicle began to move steadily forward, out onto the main street of Harmony. They made a right turn and headed north back toward Fairplay and the highway that wound down the valley toward the interstate and Glenwood Springs.

 

Krysty was sitting in the rear of the wag, with the rear ob slit partly open, looking out of it as Harmony ville shrank away behind them.

 

And vanished.

 

 

 

WHEN THEY REACHED the ville of Breckenridge, Mildred asked if they could stop there for a break and to get some fresh air. "Like traveling in a can of tuna with the added flavor of the exhaust fumes," she said. "Like to see Breckenridge. I took place in a shooting competition here, a year or so before I got ill."

 

J.B. parked the wag in the center of the ville, near a long-dry fountain, its base cracked by an ancient earth slip, and they all climbed out.

 

"By the Three Kennedys! What a relief. Perhaps it beats the labor of walking, but I am most damnably cramped. I have been shaken, rattled, bumped and bounced from pillar to post and back again. Thank the Lord for some good fresh air. This must have been a pretty place, Mildred, once upon a time."

 

"It was. Pay anything up to a thousand dollars a night for a suite. Look at it now. Tumbled glory."

 

The ville seemed to be deserted and looked as if quake damage had ravaged it, probably at the beginning of the long winters. Its triple-decker shopping mall was a heap of rotting concrete and shattered glass, and the trendy little boutiques with their fancy names were no more.

 

"Good country for skiing," Krysty said, looking around. "That why it was so costly?"

 

"Sure was. Like Crested Butte and Vail and Aspen. Lovely little villages that got themselves 'developed.' Blocks of identical condos sprouted overnight, and film stars bought blocks of land for their hideaway ranches and mansions. And now the developments have been swept away by earth slips and quakes and avalanches and the hand of Father Time, and it's all beautiful again."

 

"Should have asked the people up in Harmony for some food," Ryan said.

 

"Probably fruit here. Go look?"

 

"Sure, Jak. Why not. But don't go wandering around on your own."

 

"I would be delighted to accompany the young fellow," Doc offered.

 

Ryan looked at Krysty. "You want to walk some and see the sights, lover?"

 

"Sure. Mildred?"

 

"Think that John and I might take us a stroll around the ruins."

 

"Meet back at the wag in an hour or so. Then we can move on and get through Glenwood Springs well before sunset. Mebbe rest up in the dormitories."

 

"If they haven't flooded," J.B. said.

 

"Fireblast! Forgot about the burst pipes in all the excitement since then. Yeah, as long as the redoubt's not flooded out we could spend the night and get some rest. Then jump first thing the next morning."

 

"Sounds fine," Mildred agreed. "You sec locked the wag, John?"

 

"Yeah. Back here in an hour."

 

 

 

RYAN LINKED ARMS with Krysty and they walked south, along what had been the main street of Breckenridge, past row after row of ruined stores, some with their faded names still visible after nearly a hundred years.

 

"That's an odd name." Ryan pointed at what seemed to have been an art shop. "Yrellag Gallery. Think it's a Native American name, lover?"

 

Krysty smiled at him. "No."

 

"You're looking smug. Why's that?"

 

"Because I get the name. It's the same backward as forward. Uncle Tyas McCann told me about things that are like that. Called palindromes. A sentence he told me was 'Madam I'm Adam.' Another one's 'Able was I ere I saw Elba.' About Napoleon. You get it, Ryan?"

 

"Oh, yeah. Not so clever as I thought it was once you can understand it."

 

There was a store that had sold designer pants, called Ski Bums. A religious bookstore called A-pray Ski. A liquor store was named On the Piste. Children's clothing was available at Nursery Slopes.

 

"They just have any places called the Grocer's or the Butcher's?" Krysty asked. "Seems you had to think up a witty title before you were allowed to open here."

 

"Stupes," Ryan sniffed. "Just another reason why the world ended."

 

"Don't be a misery." She kissed him on the cheek.

 

"How do you feel about your mother mebbe being alive?"

 

"Can't say. Gaia, but I wish I knew where she was."

 

"Could be we'll bump into her one day."

 

Krysty smiled again. "Could be."

 

"It's odd not to have to keep looking over my shoulder to make sure that Dean's not gotten himself into trouble. Hope the kid'll be all right."

 

"If any kid can survive, it's Dean Cawdor," she said. "Takes after his father."

 

"Think so?"

 

"I know so."

 

 

 

JAK AND DOC CAME BACK from their scavenging expedition with pockets filled with small sweet peaches. And Mildred and J.B. had found their way along the back of the main street of Breckenridge until they came across a clean, fast-flowing stream of meltwater from higher up the valley.

 

They'd washed out the canteens from the stinking armawag, opened up the ob slits to let in some fresh air and purged the stench of the killers.

 

Ryan sat with his back against the warm flank of the vehicle, sipping the icy water, chewing at one of the tangy peaches, yawning. "Known worse places and worse days," he said.

 

Doc flicked a peach pit into the bed of the dry fountain. "What I find truly bizarre about this wonderful day is that it commenced at its dawning with the legitimized butchery of hordes of the vile and ungodly."

 

Mildred nodded. "Agree with you for once, Doc. Our hands are smeared with blood, and yet it all seems like it was several days ago."

 

"Another world," Krysty said, running her fingers through her mane of flaming hair, now uncoiled and free across her shoulders. "Far away."

 

Ryan was aware of movement and spun, seeing an elderly woman standing watching them from the balcony of a house, a little way up the hill. She was wearing a stiff black dress with a string of jet beads around her neck. And she held a black parasol to protect her from the sun.

 

"Good day to you, ma'am," he called, waving a hand in greeting, but the woman ignored him.

 

Everyone turned and saw the strange sight. Doc cleared his throat. "By the Three Kennedys! She is like a portrait from an ancient lithograph." He stood and bowed, receiving a slight inclination of the head toward him. "Some apparition from the pages of Montague James."

 

The woman watched them as they finished their alfresco picnic, once more returning a final bow from Doc as they readied themselves to leave.

 

"Think all right?" Jak asked. "Need help?"

 

Ryan shook his head firmly at the teenager's question. "Looks fine to me, Jak."

 

He raised his voice. "Anything we can do for you, ma'am?"

 

The woman almost smiled and slowly moved her head from side to side, the afternoon sunshine flickering off the polished jet of her necklace.

 

"There. She's fine. Everyone finished eating and drinking? Then we can get going again."

 

Krysty was last into the armawag and she turned to wave farewell to the woman, but the balcony was deserted.

 

 

 

THEY REACHED the predark interstate close to the ville of Frisco, starting to move along west at a fair rate. A rusted sign told them that Glenwood Springs was around eighty miles away.

 

They stopped again for a comfort break near Eagle, having found that the interstate was buckled and destroyed by quakes, forcing them to use an older parallel road.

 

Doc, more prudish than the others about his bodily functions, had gone deep into a tangle of chokeberry bushes, vanishing totally from sight. They could all hear an exclamation of surprise and a thrashing around in the undergrowth.

 

"You okay, Doc?" J.B. called.

 

"I am in the very best of health, my dear fellow. Tiptop. Top of the tip-top. Top of the world, Ma. Top of the morning to you, Seamus. Spin the top" The voice faded away to a preoccupied mumble.

 

Everyone else had long finished before he came lumbering out of the bushes, cursing under his breath as the tangles plucked at his frock coat.

 

"What you got there?" Ryan asked, seeing that the old man appeared to be holding an arrow.

 

A peculiarly long arrow.

 

"There was the body of a deer in the brush. Well, to be perfectly specific, it was little more than a skeleton. Bones and a few fragments of its skin. And this was jammed between two of its ribs. Poor animal must have been shot and fled, eventually finding its surcease in hiding."

 

Ryan took the arrow, measuring it against himself. "Least four feet long. And the feathers aren't goose, are they? Look more like a heron, or something like that." Realization dawned on him. "Fireblast! Course. It's like one of those Japanese arrows, isn't it?"

 

"That was my thought," Doc admitted. "They certainly get around, our mysterious Oriental brethren, do they not? From the condition of the deer, I would hazard a guess that it met its doom at least six months ago."

 

Ryan examined the arrow, which was beautifully made, far better than most of the hunting arrows that he'd seen from the Oglala and the Chiricahua, from plains to mountains. And he wondered again where the samurai came from and how they traveled so easily through Deathlands.

 

In all the years of riding with the Trader he'd never even heard a whisper of slant-eye killers with long arrows and honed swords.

 

"No sign of any others, Doc?"

 

"Absolutely none, John Barrymore. The deer could have run for miles before expiring. And, as I said, it was a long time ago, in another country and, besides, the wench is dead." Doc's face wrinkled with puzzlement. "What in hades made me say that? I believe it is from some play or other."

 

"Time we were moving on," Ryan said. "Need to get through Glenwood Springs before dark and up to the redoubt."

 

"No kind of shortcut?" Jak asked. "North?"

 

J.B. had slid behind the wheel of the small four-wheel-drive wag. "No, afraid not. Have to go right into the ville and then dump the wag. Rest on foot."

 

The highway was in worse condition than they'd expected, and they had to take bone-rattling detours over muddy rutted trails. By the time they saw the pale yellow lights of Glenwood Springs in the distance, the sun was already setting beyond the endless forest.