Chapter Ten

 

 

They crossed over a ridge, leaving the poisoned water behind them, finding themselves in a cleaner and fresher part of the country.

 

There were sweeping banks of scented flowers, the blossoms drooping heavily toward the lush grass, and they forded three fast-running streams of good, sparkling water. All six of them drank deeply.

 

They could see the tall plume of smoke more clearly and could even catch the smell of it when the wind shifted a little. It carried the flavor of cooking meat, which made all of them salivate with hunger.

 

"Hope they're friendly to outlanders," Krysty said.

 

"Won't matter that much if they're not." Ryan's lean face was vulpine with the desire for something to eat and to put a lining on his groaning stomach.

 

They had seen tracks of deer at two of the crossings, and once a flock of doves circled noisily above them. Jak had drawn his Colt Python, holstering it at Ryan's snapped command.

 

"If we want everyone to know there's strangers in the woods, then we can yell out and tell them."

 

 

 

IT WAS A SMALL COMMUNITY.

 

They approached it with the greatest caution, in an extended double-red skirmish line. The streams had melted into a larger river, which flowed over bubbling shallows, running deeper a little farther beyond the village, through high cliffs.

 

About a dozen shacks, mostly thatched with reeds, stretched along a main street of trampled mud. The smoke that they'd seen from afar came from what looked to be a communal cooking fire, with two or three iron pots dangling over it. The smell of broiling meat drifting toward the invisible watchers, behind their wall of undergrowth.

 

Ryan counted seventeen people in the half hour they patiently watched and waited.

 

Nine were children below the age of adolescence. Five were women, one of them extremely old. Of the three men, only one looked to be under fifty, and he walked with a heavy limp, dragging a wasted right leg behind him as he moved, leaning heavily on a carved stick.

 

"Step in and take," Jak whispered.

 

"My guess is that the men are out hunting," Ryan replied. "Could come back any time. Don't want to get caught coldcocked and have to chill our way out."

 

"Not unless we have to," J.B. added.

 

"Yeah."

 

A couple of scrawny dogs sniffed around each other, occasionally snarling.

 

Mildred grinned at the sight. "I ever tell you the first time I saw two dogs making it? I was about six and I was out with my Uncle Josh. I asked him what the dogs were doing. 'Well, Millie,' he said. 'The poor animal in front has been struck sightless, and the one behind is helping to push it to the hospital for the blind.' Never forgot that." They all laughed quietly.

 

 

 

THE SCENT of the cooking stew was driving them all crazy.

 

"We been waiting here an hour or more, Ryan," Mildred complained.

 

"That food must be ready soon" Ryan explained. "I want to see if the hunters come back to eat. Or whether it's just for the folks left here. Give it another half hour."

 

"By then I fear that I shall have faded away utterly and be nothing but a handful of rags and a shred or two of skin and bone." Doc held up his hand. "Look, my friends. It is more like the claw of an eagle."

 

"I'd have said it was more like some old crow, Doc, but I guess you got the right on your side." Mildred sucked in her cheeks, miming starvation.

 

"Half an hour," Ryan insisted.

 

The friends were as close to open rebellion as he'd ever known them to be.

 

But Ryan was right.

 

Just when it looked as if Doc and Mildred were going to break ranks and go out alone into the village, they heard the sound of men's voices, coming toward them from the direction of the river. Everyone flattened, peering through the brush at a band of a dozen men, aged from midteens to midforties, walking by, carrying the carcass of a deer slung over a pole.

 

Most of them were hefting old single-shot, long-barreled muskets, while a couple had primitive cap-and-ball pistols. Several had long, broad-bladed swords.

 

They wore mostly a collection of ragged clothes and patched furs.

 

"Double-poor," Krysty whispered to Ryan. "Kind that might turn on strangers like rabid dogs."

 

He nodded his agreement. "Could be. Pesthole like this won't welcome outlanders."

 

J.B. had the same thought. "Wish we had a war wag with us," he said quietly.

 

Mildred was puzzled. "They look decent, honest people. Why don't we just go and ask for food? Explain we gotten ourselves lost and we're hungry."

 

"Indeed." Doc licked his lips. "I find myself in agreement with my colleague. Surely they would not think to refuse poor travelers sustenance?"

 

"Would they not?" Ryan asked wryly. "I wouldn't want to stake my life on that, Doc. I've seen dozens mebbe hundredsof places like this. Tiny inbred communities, where everyone fucks everyone else and the only thing they unite on is a hatred of strangers. Get more kindness from mad dogs."

 

"So, what we do?" Jak asked.

 

"Talk loudly and carry a big stick," Doc suggested. "Is that not correct?"

 

Ryan smiled, standing cautiously and drawing the SIG-Sauer from its holster. "Put it your own way, Doc, but I guess the idea's right. Go in fast and heavy. Get out quick."

 

"Want me and Mildred to circle around and come in from the other side?" J.B. was peering past the dirt-poor houses. "Looks like a wider river through yonder. Could be boats. Take us away from here to do some exploring."

 

"Right. Take four minutes fromnow! Move in and try and keep them under control. Just tell them we only want to be fed and then we'll leave."

 

"Chilling?"

 

"If we have to. Now go."

 

J.B., carrying the reloaded Uzi ready at high port, vanished silently away to the right, followed by Mildred. Ryan stayed where he was with Krysty, Jak and Doc, checking his wrist chron, counting off the seconds.

 

"One minute to go. Remember that we have to make them think we'll blast them if they step out of line."

 

Krysty looked at him, her face dappled in shadow. "Well, we will, won't we?"

 

"Yeah. Yeah, we will." He looked again at the changing digital display. "Ten seconds. Let's get moving, people."

 

 

 

THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE of six heavily armed strangers, coming in from both ends of their tiny village, produced an instant panic. But to Ryan's great relief, the panic took the form of a passive defeatism.

 

The disabled man appeared to be the leader of the ragged community and he was the first to see them, spotting Ryan as the one-eyed man strode from cover toward the cooking fire. He immediately gave a great ululating cry of despair, falling awkwardly to his knees, hands clasped in front of him.

 

"Don't kill us, mister."

 

"Everyone keep still and nobody do nothing foolish and nobody gets hurt." Ryan fired a single shot into the air to confirm the threat, the sound of the explosion echoing flatly around the small settlement.

 

"What do ye want, mister?" The whole village was on its knees, eyes rolling, mouths sagging in fear.

 

"Food is all. We got ourselves lost in that maze of lakes back there. Deeply hungered. Smelled your stew cooking and figured you wouldn't let honest folks starve."

 

The relief could almost be tasted. The man's face lost its pallor, and he kept looking back and forth from Ryan to J.B.

 

"Why, sure. Surely, neighbors. What we have is ye welcome to. Be ready to eat right soon."

 

"Ye can stay a night or more, neighbor," mumbled a toothless woman with a gaping sore that leaked a colorless liquid over her neck and stained her torn cotton dress. "Any of ye with no bed warmers'd be welcome to take ye pick."

 

Ryan nodded. "Thanks for that offer. But no thanks. A meal and on our way. What's the river yonder?" Now that he was in the center of the village he could see it more clearly, making out a ramshackle jetty with a couple of rafts moored there.

 

The man grinned, showing a mouth filled with rotting teeth that jostled and leaned against each other like a cemetery after a quake. "You don't know what the river is, neighbor. Where ye been all ye life?"

 

"Hither and yon," Ryan replied, falling into the same kind of drawling patois that he remembered from being in rural Tennessee with the Trader.

 

"That be Tennessee."

 

"The Tennessee River?"

 

"Surely be."

 

"Where does it run?" J.B. asked, standing with his finger on the trigger of the Uzi, watching warily.

 

"It runs to Canada and to the Gulf of Mexico," the disabled man replied. "So they says, as there ain't a man nor wench from these parts ever bin far enough to see. We travel a day or so to the north and south. No more. Not safe. Gangs of muties. Ye seen muties, neighbor?"

 

"Not lately. Plenty over the years. Ye be troubled by stickies?"

 

"And scabbies and swampies and ghoulies," cackled the toothless harridan, who seemed to be lacking several shingles from her roof. "Ye name them and we seen them."

 

Ryan looked around the circle of haunted, watchful faces, seeing the ingrained dirt and mistrust, the tiny red eyes like trapped rodents that flicked along the line of outlanders. His guess at inbreeding was obviously right. Hardly one in five looked normal, with every kind of mental and physical disease showing itself.

 

"Food," he said, "and we'll be gone."

 

 

 

THEY WERE GIVEN wooden bowls and spoons made from horn, taking the stew to sit on one side of the fire, blasters ready at hand while they ate. But the villagers didn't show any sign of rebellion, though resentment at giving away their precious food was etched clear on every ruined face.

 

"What is this place called?" Doc asked, trying to make conversation to fill the uncomfortable void.

 

"Ain't called nothin', neighbor. Don't give a name to a place you eat and sleep and shit. No point."

 

"No. No, I suppose there is some sort of logic behind that thinking."

 

The food was excellent, better than many a meal that Ryan had eaten in some of the wealthiest and most powerful villes in Deathlands.

 

It was a stew that seemed to consist mainly of roasted venison, though there was also some pork in it. There were chunks of potato, carrot and turnip, all spiced and flavored with an assortment of herbs.

 

Everyone went back for seconds, except Jak, who went back for thirds.

 

Ryan checked his chron, seeing that it was closing in on two in the afternoon.

 

"Where's the nearest ville to here?"

 

Hardly anyone had moved among the villagers. The disabled chief answered the question. "Be no ville. No baron rules hereabouts, neighbor. Nothin' to rule, if ye see what I means. Be villes to the south and west. Old Memphis has villes." He grinned without humor. "Not that any of us been there."

 

"Nashville?" Mildred asked.

 

He sniffed and spit in the mud. "Wouldn't know, girlie. Believe that Nashville was nuked out of the sight of God and man. So they says. Sodom and Gomorrah rolled together, it was. Worshipers at the shrine of Baal, they says."

 

Mildred opened her eyes wide, letting the "girlie" pass unchallenged. "And the ungodly were smitten and all their clothing rent and their dwellings cast down and the lord soweth their fields with salt and left not one stone upon another."

 

Her words brought an unexpected and ragged chorus of "Amens" from the watching villagers.

 

"What book of the Bible did that come from?" Doc whispered. "I seem to almost recognize it."

 

"The First Book of Mildred," she replied.

 

The old man gave a cackle of laughter and nearly choked on his last spoonful of stew. "Upon my soul, madam, but you are a character, indeed you are. I tell you now that I am a person who likes to talk to a person who likes to talk."

 

Ryan pointed at him. "Can it, Doc. We're leaving." He kept his voice pitched low. "This is where it could get warm."

 

He addressed the villagers. "Grateful for the meal, neighbors. Surely are."

 

"Welcome, ye is."

 

Now everyone was on their feet.

 

Ryan pointed toward the Tennessee River. "One more favor. Like to borrow one of your rafts. Bring it back here to you in a day or two."

 

"Ye askin' or ye telling'?"

 

Now the suppressed anger and hostility came seething out. Fists were shaken, daggers drawn, and fingers played with the hammers on flintlocks.

 

Ryan raised his voice. "You got off light and easy, neighbors. No harm done. A little food is all. You can build another raft in a day or less."

 

"Build one yeself."

 

Ryan smiled and the shouting quieted. "God makes sheep and He makes wolves. That's His nature. You might not like it, specially as you're all the sheep and we're the wolves. But the best thing a sheep can do is keep its bastard head down and stay quiet. Wolves move on and not a hair harmed on a head. You all understand me?" Nobody spoke.

 

He addressed their chief. "You understand?"

 

"Yes." His sullen face was tight like a mask one size too small.

 

"Then that's good. J.B., you lead on and we'll follow you. Triple-red."

 

It looked as if it was going to work, but they still had to actually get away on the raft, and that would be the most vulnerable moment.

 

They skirted the fire, J.B. and Mildred going on ahead to check the raft and get it ready for a speedy embarkation. Ryan had the SIG-Sauer cocked in his right hand, walking slowly sideways, eyes never leaving the villagers, who had formed themselves into a half circle, moving parallel to the outlanders, toward the wide river. It was like a powder keg waiting for a spark.

 

"Shoot a few," Jak hissed. "Buy us time."

 

"No. Not unless we have to. They're still terrified of us. We can get away with no blood spilled on the ground."

 

J.B. and Mildred had loosened the mooring lines on the larger of the pair of crude rafts, checking there were long oars aboard to propel them along. They beckoned for Ryan and the others to come aboard.

 

The villagers were following them, like a pack of snarling curs, raging in anger, waving weapons at the outlanders. None of them dared to actually attack.

 

"We gave ye food and ye take our lives! We could've slain all of ye."

 

Ryan shook his head at the disabled chief. "Not true. We all know it. One wrong move and this stinkin' pesthole would cease to be."

 

The river was a hundred feet wide, flowing fast and clear. To the north were high cliffs and gorges, but the way south was between open bluffs, tree lined.

 

Ryan stepped aboard, followed by Krysty. Doc came next, stumbling and nearly losing his balance on the rocking logs. Jak hopped agilely on to help the old man. Mildred was already in the bow, J.B holding the single stern line.

 

"Let her go," Ryan said, watching the villagers.

 

Someone threw a jagged flint that hit Jak on the shoulder. He swung around and instinctively opened up with his Magnum, and the blood spilling began.