Chapter Thirteen

 

 

The night passed uneventfully.

 

Ryan was awakened once by a hunting owl, circling around the smoldering remnants of the camp fire, its mournful hooting echoing across the silent river.

 

There was also some pain from his wound, stabbing and making him gasp when he tried to get up for a piss around four in the morning.

 

The whole leg had tightened, and there was enough moonlight for him to see that the bruising had come, purpling the swollen skin around both entrance and exit wounds. It had stiffened while he'd been sleeping, and to move away from the others, propping himself against the live oak, hurt Ryan.

 

Krysty had awakened as he moved, but he'd whispered for her to go back to sleep.

 

The night was still, with just a faint breeze flowing south with the Tennessee, carrying the scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh. A silver segment of moon sailed bright and serene between ragged shreds of high cloud. Away to the east, inland from their camp, Ryan caught the infinitely distant rumble of thunder and saw the silver lace of a chem storm. But it was all far enough away to give no cause for concern.

 

Doc's phrase about it being a time out of war struck at him as he finished relieving himself. After the brief firefight at the dirt-poor frontier pesthole, the day had been calm and gentle. No threat from the elements or from any living creatures.

 

And the coming day promised to be similar, cruising quietly along, carried safely on the bosom of the mighty river, south through the green fields of Tennessee. It was so rare for any of them for even a day to pass without some sort of threat of violence or, so often, actual violence.

 

Once dawn came up they would set off toward Savannah and Shiloh. Ryan had read a little about the Civil War, and he knew that Shiloh had been the bloodiest of battles, with close to twenty-five thousand men killed or missing or wounded, unimaginably huge losses in those days.

 

He picked his way around the glowing embers of the fire and laid down again at Krysty's side.

 

She stirred and opened her eyes. "All right, lover?" she muttered.

 

"Fine. Just fine."

 

"No trouble?"

 

He patted her hand. "None."

 

 

 

RYAN SLEPT SOUNDLY, waking only when Jak began breaking up some dry wood to rekindle the fire, whistling to himself, his breath pluming out in the dawn chill.

 

"Coffee, toast, ham, eggs over-easy, fresh orange juice, grits, pancakes, maple syrup, fries and then some more coffee." Ryan grinned at the white-haired teenager. "You got all of that?"

 

"We got berries fresh and berries medium-rare and berries well-done, Ryan." He brushed back his hair from his ruby eyes. "Oh, and we also got berries."

 

"Serve me up a steaming platter of those elusive berries, myrmidon," Doc called.

 

"Should we do some hunting?" the Armorer asked, stretching his arms wide and adjusting his fedora.

 

"Might not be a bad idea." Ryan yawned. "No hurry to leave this place. Who knows what the food situation'll be like farther south? Could run into an old hot spot or find ourselves in some mutie paradise."

 

"Get us a deer," Jak suggested.

 

"Pig might be better. If it wasn't for my leg, I'd come with you. Even with my stick, I figure I'd get in the way."

 

"I'll go with John," Mildred offered. "If game's that plentiful, I can certainly bring something down with my revolver. Could do with some practice."

 

Ryan nodded. "Fine. Rest of us'll stay around here. Collect some more dry wood. Scavenge around for vegetables to go with the meat."

 

"I believe that I saw some sweet potatoes last night," Doc said. "Should I go and dig some up?"

 

"Yeah. And if there's any old buckets or pots to cook in If there's this orchard, then the remains of an old house can't be all that far away."

 

"We could go look," Krysty said eagerly. "Don't have to make it all the way south to Shiloh today. Just for once we got this quiet time. Let's make the best of it."

 

 

 

JAK AND DOC STAYED to gather wood and to get vegetables and more fruit for the meal, while J.B. borrowed the Steyr rifle again. "Just in case you miss, Mildred."

 

"That's about as likely as Joe Montana missing a fourth-and-inches," she said, seeing bewilderment. "Greatest quarterback ever lived. Played mainly for the Niners during the eighties. I mean, the greatest."

 

"Young deer or a tender little piggy," Ryan said. "Leave it to you."

 

He and Krysty struck inland, following J.B. and Mildred until their greater speed took them ahead, out of sight.

 

"How's the leg, lover?" Krysty asked once they were alone in the lush green wilderness.

 

"Had worse. Had better. From my experience of getting myself shot, the second day's often the worst. Bleeding's stopped and the bruise's coming out. Got to stop the muscles all stiffening up. Bit of exercise like this is about the best thing I could do." He grimaced as his stick slipped in some muddy grass and he stumbled. "Anyway, Mildred said she thought that it likely wouldn't do me no harm."

 

"Any harm."

 

"What I said." He grinned at her.

 

"Sure." She took his arm over a rough patch of ground. "Looks like this might have been steps once. Part of a formal garden, mebbe?"

 

He gazed around where they stood. They were among some delicate flowering shrubs with pink-and-silver-fronded flowers. Ryan didn't know the names of many ornamental plants. Trader often used to say that there wasn't much point in knowing the names of something you couldn't eat.

 

"Suppose there could be a garden somewhere under all this. A house even?"

 

She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. "The scent of those flowers is wonderful, lover. If there is the ruins of a house, it could be buried in among those trees yonder." She pointed to the northeast, where the tops of a grove of sturdy sycamores waved in the freshening morning breeze.

 

He hobbled after her, the end of the makeshift stick clicking off stone flags that lay just below a layer of grass. Doc had offered him the swordstick, but Ryan had refused it, worried that his weight might splinter the delicate ebony casing if he should suddenly need to throw his weight on it.

 

"Steps," Krysty warned. "With sort of carved faces on the rocks over that little pool."

 

The pool was dried up, long ago, maybe due to leaking conduits, but its green stained sides showed where it had stood. As they looked, a pair of tiny frogs, glittering like golden jewels, hopped across the path in front of them.

 

"This must've been a hell of a beautiful place once," Ryan said, steadying himself for a moment on an ornamental balustrade. "Serious jack involved."

 

"Unless it was some sort of a public park," Krysty suggested. "Mebbe a museum or a gallery."

 

"More paintings like in the redoubt? That I wouldn't mind seeing."

 

"All right to go a little farther?"

 

"Sure thing." He looked around to the right at the sound of a gunshot, a flat, muffled echo. "Mildred's target revolver. One bullet. Should mean we'll be having some good eating when we get back to the raft."

 

"You don't mind us not moving south straightaway?"

 

"'Course not. Why?"

 

"You're a walking dude, Ryan Cawdor. Man who moves and wants to keep moving. Staying still in one place, even for a few hours, isn't hardly in your nature."

 

"Thing doesn't move, then it rots."

 

"Thing doesn't put down roots and it'll die," she replied. "Mother Sonja warned me about marrying a gambling man or a traveling man. She would have liked you, Ryan."

 

"Think so?"

 

"Know so."

 

"Would I have liked her?" He answered his own question. "Yeah, I know I would. Sorry that I'll never get the chance."

 

"They didn't say she was dead. Just up and vanished." Krysty turned away, but Ryan caught the glint of sudden tears. "Mebbe one day"

 

"Why not? Look at Trader. Thought the old dog bought the farm years ago. Then there he was. Large as life and twice as bastard unpleasant."

 

"Mother Sonja could be alive, couldn't she?"

 

Ryan nodded slowly. "I don't lie to you, love. Odds are she's long dead. Way it is in Deathlands. But there's a chance. Sort of woman who was your mother has to have something special going for her. Why not?"

 

Krysty sniffed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "Stupe to get upset on such a lovely morning in such a lovely place. Should be enjoying living, not getting maudlin and sad about theabout those who've gone."

 

"Right. Shall we go on up these steps and see what we find?" He peered at the soft ground. "Can't see any tracks of any kind around here."

 

The stairs were wide enough for a good-size wag to drive down them, lined with creepers that hung their purple flowers to the ground.

 

They opened onto a long terrace, edged with ornamental shrubs and drooping willows, growing alongside a narrow stream that flowed slowly through the garden, its limpid surface covered in waxen pink lilies.

 

"There," Krysty said. "That looks like a building, covered with ivy."

 

"Could be. Looks more like a church."

 

"Yeah, it does."

 

Now they could see it more clearly. It consisted of a single story, a kind of stubby tower at one end, with a crenelated top to it and a large clock face, handless, the gilt Roman numerals faded and worn.

 

There were windows all along the side of the building and a door, iron-studded, protected by a large porch.

 

"It's definitely a kind of church," Krysty said. "Looks real old. Lovely honey-colored stones."

 

"Doesn't seem much damaged."

 

"There's a track leading to it from the opposite direction. Mebbe there's a highway out that way."

 

Ryan nodded. "Could be. Don't want to go too far and attract attention to us. Take a quick look, then I think we should get back to the raft. See what kind of food Mildred shot for us. I'm already feeling hungry again."

 

"Me, too." Krysty sniffed again at the scented air. "Beautiful flowers. Make you feel almost dizzy with their smell. All right, lover, let's go take a look."

 

 

 

THE SMALL BUILDING was in an amazingly good state of preservation. On one side there was a range of stained-glass windows, but from the exterior it wasn't possible to see what they portrayed. On the other, northern flank, the glass was crazed and clear, as if the color had been leached from it.

 

"Could have been some kind of radiation from a skyburst," Ryan suggested, leaning on the stick and staring at the windows. "Likely a neutron nuke."

 

"Path's been kept trimmed back, and someone's mown the grass at the side by the porch." Krysty beckoned him to her. "Let's look inside."

 

Ryan wasn't comfortable. The short hairs at his nape were prickling, often a sign of some sort of impending threat. "You feel anything?" he asked.

 

She stopped, her hand reaching for the twisted iron handle of the arched double door. "Yes Could be someone's not too far away. Feeling's sort of blurred."

 

"Bad?"

 

"No. Not bad. Not anything. You know it's often sort of confused. Might be someone good at veiling their true feelings. Come on, let's look inside."

 

Inside the porch was a wooden notice, painted black, neatly lettered in gothic gold printing The Shrine Of The Blessed Antoninus Of Padua. Founded 1889. Come In To Worship.

 

Ryan ran his fingers over the lettering, looking at them. "Clean," he said, speaking quietly. "Been wiped free from dust in the last day or so."

 

"Must be a priest."

 

"We should get back to the raft." He had an urgent feeling that wouldn't translate into words.

 

"In a minute. Door's open, look."

 

Krysty pushed it silently back, walking away from Ryan into the cool interior. He followed her, combat boots ringing on smooth gray stone, catching the strong smell of incense, a scent that seemed to overlay another, more familiar odor that made him hesitate. But he couldn't quite identify the elusive smell.

 

There were a dozen pews ranged down each side, and a stone altar sat at the far end of the nave. Now in the gloomy interior, with the bright sun outside, it was possible to appreciate the delicate stained glass.

 

Five separate windows ran down one side. The other side still had the lead patterning, but all color was gone and the glass was starred and fractured.

 

Ryan looked behind him for a moment, sensing the door closing of its own accord. He saw that it hung on drop hinges and relaxed a little. Walking down the aisle, they admired the workmanship of the pictures.

 

They all, oddly, showed scenes of violence but done in a Victorian classic way, strangely devoid of emotion. Despite the horror show, nobody seemed to be actually suffering any real pain or emotion.

 

A man in a white sheet was being stabbed to death by a dozen others, similarly clothed. A tall, powerful black man was strangling a slender young woman across a wide bed. A grizzled man in armor knelt on the floor, arms held tightly, while a shadowy figure was plucking his eyes from their sockets. A blond woman held out stumps of arms, mouth wide open to show the bloodied rags of her tongue. And in the last picture a wretched man was being drowned in what looked like a barrel of beer.

 

Krysty had also been looking at the stained glass, turning away from it with an expression of disgust. "Brilliantly done, but horrible," she said. "Why put something like that in a church? Hideous."

 

"Concentrate the mind on death," Ryan said.

 

"I remember reading some plays by an old-time predark writer called Shakespeare, back in Harmony. I think these some of them, anyway, are from his plays, Mebbe the other side was the same before it got nuked."

 

A large Bible stood open on a lectern in the shape of a brass eagle. Ryan walked to it, stopping by a carved plaque set in the wall.

 

 

 

This is a shrine to the blessed memory of Saint Antoninus of Padua and all penitents, remembering the legendary visit to this spot of Josephus of Arimathea, where it was once stated that this site on the Tennessee River was, perhaps, a hiding place of the Holy Grail.

 

 

 

"Holy Grail," Ryan said. "I didn't know that any of the old gospelers ever got this far west."

 

Krysty had walked to the bottom of the tower, craning her head back, staring up at a single bronze bell, with a long red-and-white plaited rope dangling from it.

 

Ryan looked at the book on the lectern, realizing that it wasn't actually like any Bible that he'd ever seen. It was open to the second chapter of the Dissertation of the Blessed Alphonse Donatien.

 

 

 

Only through pain and suffering shall there be redemption and an end to mortal weakness. Agony is seemly. There shalt be those who endure and tolerate the rending of their flesh and the splintering of their bones, and there shalt also be those that shall carry out such punishments in the name of all the holy ones.

 

 

 

"Sick stuff," Ryan said, turning away.

 

Krysty had been unable to resist the temptation and had loosened the rope from its cleat, tugging gently at it.

 

The bell tolled immediately, sending out a booming note across the summer morning.

 

"Leave it," Ryan snapped. "Want to rouse the whole bastard country against us?"

 

"Nobody here but us chickens, boss," she said, her teeth flashing in the gloom of the belfry. "Take it easy, lover. I always wanted to do this."

 

Ryan noticed that there was something lying on top of the altar. It was a multithonged whip, with tiny metal barbs knotted into each lash. All of them were stiff and stained black with what looked unmistakably like old, dried blood.

 

Suddenly the feeling of a threatening danger became much stronger. "Come on," he called. "Something's not straight about this place. Not a proper church."

 

Krysty let go of the rope, letting it dangle loose, the bell carrying on ringing, quieter and quieter, until its whispering sound faded away.

 

"Probably be able to hear that down by the river," she said. "Unless the noise of the water drowns it. Still, Mildred and J.B. would be close enough."

 

Ryan joined her, peering up in the darkness at a narrow metal ladder that climbed into the tower, seeing the softly swinging, silent bell.

 

"Out of here," he said urgently. "Before someone comes and brings trouble."

 

Neither of them heard the door whisper open, but they both recognized the audible click of the twin hammers being drawn back on a scattergun.

 

"Welcome, pilgrims," said a jolly voice.