Chapter Three

 

 

The stranger propped himself up on one elbow, made a tentative move to touch his groin, blinked around, licked his lips and said faintly, "Hey."

 

"Hey yourself," Mildred replied. "Before you ask, you're not hurt too badly. Contusions, abrasions, a lot of lacerations, but most are superficial."

 

The man peered at her suspiciously. "You talk like a healer."

 

"I am. What's your name?"

 

The man scanned the faces in the back of the wag. "Those screamwings nearly chewed me to pieces. You got 'em off me?"

 

"Yeah," Ryan answered. "It was the only fair thing to do since we stirred them up."

 

"Accidentally," Krysty added. "The vibrations of the engine disturbed them."

 

Ryan made quick introductions all around, but the stranger didn't seem inclined to identify himself.

 

"Where are you from?" the man asked.

 

"Far and away, hither and yon," Doc replied with a smile.

 

"Never heard of them places," the man muttered.

 

"We're still waiting to hear your name," Mildred reminded him.

 

"Zadfrak."

 

"What?"

 

"Zadfrak," the man said impatiently. "I don't stutter, do I?"

 

Jak snickered, but fell silent when Ryan glanced his way.

 

"Where you from?" J.B. asked.

 

"Helskel."

 

Ryan's eyes narrowed. "That a ville, or what?"

 

Groaning, Zadfrak sat up. "A what."

 

Though the light was dimming, Ryan gave Zadfrak a close inspection. No longer covered in blood, he didn't look like a healthy man. His face bore a deep pallor that the sun could never touch, and his naked torso and limbs were fishbelly white. Between red-rimmed, watery blue eyes, an X was carved into the bridge of his nose. The scar looked like the result of a painful process involving a red-hot needle. Though the man appeared to be in his early- to mid-thirties, he was thin to the point of emaciation.

 

"Not carrying weapons," Jak said.

 

"So? That a crime?"

 

"No. Just triple stupe."

 

"How far to this Helskel?" J.B. demanded.

 

"What difference does it make to you, four-eyes?"

 

Ryan tensed, but J.B. only smiled gently. He took his foot off the gas pedal and allowed the wag to slow to a crawl. Turning his head to look at Zadfrak, he said in a quiet voice, "The difference is that I know just about every settlement, outpost and ville in Deathlands. I never heard of a Helskel."

 

In a quick flick of the wrist, J.B. picked up the M-4000 from the passenger seat, swung it around and pressed the bore against Zadfrak's back. "And since you were on a motorcycle, it means that wherever you came from isn't far from where we found you. And if you talk to me like that again, the screamwings will finish you off. Now answer my question."

 

Zadfrak seemed undisturbed by J.B.'s words and the pressure of the blaster. He cougheda deep racking sound from the bottom of his lungs. He put a hand to his mouth, spit into it, examined the result and flung his hand down. The sputum made a bright pink blob on the dark metal of the floorplates.

 

"Rad cancer," Mildred commented, leaning back on her knees. "I suspected as much."

 

Zadfrak smiled sourly. "Yeah. That's why I was out on my bike with no weapons. Didn't give a shit what came after me screamwings, stickies, whatever." He half turned his head toward J.B. "So go ahead and shoot. You'll beat the reaper by a couple of weeks, mebbe less."

 

J.B. put his weapon back on the seat and returned his attention to driving.

 

"If that's the case," Ryan said, "you want to be dropped off by the side of the road?"

 

Zadfrak shook his head. "No. Figure I wasn't supposed to chill myself this way. Fate or destiny or some kind of shit brought us together. Might as well see where the ride takes me."

 

"Getting dark pretty soon," J.B. said. "Can we reach this Helskel of yours before nightfall?"

 

Zadfrak shook his head. "It's a day's travel and a bit. Best make camp. You don't want to be on this road at night."

 

"You know a safe place?" Ryan asked.

 

"Yeah. A couple of miles up the road."

 

Zadfrak moved around to face the shuttered windshield, leaning against the front seats. He directed J.B. to slow the vehicle, since the turnoff he was looking for wasn't easily detectable from the road, even in full daylight.

 

Ryan looked at Krysty and mouthed "Anything?"

 

She shook her head. "So far so good," she mouthed in response.

 

Though Ryan had the utmost faith in her abilities to sense danger, he wasn't comforted. Their new acquaintance appeared to be extraordinarily phlegmatic about his situation and his surroundings. He didn't make comments about the wag, or even the quality of the blasters everyone had in plain view. Many braveor foolhardysouls had tried to get their hands on the companions' weapons and had paid the ultimate price.

 

Following Zadfrak's instructions, J.B. turned the wag to the right, crossed the shoulder of the road and pushed through a few scraggly bushes. An old, almost completely overgrown gravel path pushed through the underbrush. The wag followed it slowly.

 

As the vehicle rolled farther down the path, the brush became sparser and they heard the sound of rushing water. Ryan looked past Zadfrak, his eye straining into the greenery ahead. He estimated they had penetrated two hundred yards into the underbrush when Zadfrak said, "Stop."

 

J.B. braked and sat with his hands on the wheel as he glanced over his shoulder at his guide. "Now what?"

 

"Now we get out. We got a supply of fresh water, nobody can see us from the road and we can kick back and bed down."

 

"The Black Hills are the hunting grounds of the Cheyenne and the Lakota."

 

Zadfrak made a derisive spitting noise. "The Family took care of the few that were around here. Tomorrow I'll show you what we do to redskins."

 

Mildred's lips compressed, but she said nothing.

 

Everyone disembarked, but no one wandered far. A small river was only a few hundred feet away. It wasn't very wide and didn't appear to be very deep, but judging by its lack of odor, the water was fresh enough.

 

Zadfrak leaned against the hood of the wag, not bothering to help pitch the tents or gather firewood. He accepted a sleeping bag from Jak without a word of thanks, as if it were his due.

 

They'd traded ammo for food in the last ville they'd passed through, and as Ryan helped Mildred break out the provisions, she said in a low, angry tone, "If that scrawny son of a bitch wasn't my patient, and wasn't terminal, I'd have J.B. teach him a lesson. I may do it myself if he doesn't watch his mouth."

 

Krysty and Jak prepared a meal, which was quickly consumed, and afterward they drank a pot of coffee sub.

 

Doc made a face after his first mouthful, and began his usual refrain that a coffee substitute should taste something like the original, not like boiled chicken droppings. He tried to enlist Mildred's aid in extolling the virtues of predark coffee, but she wasn't in the mood and told him so.

 

Ryan noticed that Zadfrak had eaten very little, but was sipping carefully at his cup of coffee sub. "Not much of an appetite?" he asked.

 

"My stomach always feels like it's full of broken glass. Can't eat much more than mush."

 

"Tell us about this Helskel," Krysty suggested.

 

He shrugged. "It's a place. In Manson's country."

 

"Man's Son's country?" J.B. echoed. "Sounds like some kind of religious retreat."

 

"It is, yeah. Kind of."

 

"That where got bike?" Jak asked.

 

Zadfrak nodded. "Yeah."

 

"Too bad lost it."

 

"Lots more where that one came from. Wags, too." He nodded toward the Land Rover. "Better than that one."

 

"What about fuel for them?" J.B. challenged. "That isn't easy to come by, unless you got a refinery setup."

 

"We do. And lots more. We got blasters of all kinds, all calibers. Plenty of ass, too."

 

"Sounds like heaven on earth," J.B. said sarcastically, trying to avoid meeting Mildred's icy glare.

 

Ryan doubted everything he'd heard. Colossal liars were legion in the Deathlands. But, to be polite, he asked, "Is all this stuff predark?"

 

Zadfrak took a sip from his tin cup. "Yeah. It all works, too. Lots of stuff stockpiled in the nose."

 

"The nose ?" Doc asked. "Did I hear you right? The nose?"

 

Lifting his head, the man said, sounding suddenly fearful, "Forget it. I get delirious sometimes. My head gets mixed up."

 

"Whose nose?" Jak prompted.

 

"I said forget it! I may be half-chilled, but I'm still loyal to the Family."

 

"So your kin lives in Helskel," Mildred said. "How many?"

 

Zadfrak stood quickly, dashing the contents of his cup into the darkness. "I'm feeling like shit. Need to sleep."

 

With that, he turned and shuffled away, sleeping bag rolled under one arm.

 

"That," J.B. whispered, "is one of the strangest men I ever met."

 

"Story doesn't add up," Krysty murmured. "If Helskel isn't a figment of his imagination, then it's got to be a new ville."

 

"Especially with his talk about predark stuff in perfect working condition," J.B. agreed.

 

Ryan was too tired to weigh the truth of Zadfrak's tale. "Let's turn in. Doc, you got first watch."

 

"I'll spell you at midnight," J.B. said, checking his wrist chron. "After that, it's whoever I feel like rousing."

 

Mildred pushed herself stiffly to her feet. "Long as it isn't me."

 

Everyone retired to their tents. Ryan, as tired as he was, even with Krysty's head on his shoulder, found sleep elusive. His mind toyed with the images Zadfrak's words had conjured, settling on the man's sneering dismissal of the local Indian tribes in the region.

 

Hundreds of years ago, Pa Sappa, the Black Hills, were held in high religious regard by Plains tribes. They were holy places, power points watched over by Wankan Tankan, the Great Spirit. Since the nukecaust, many of the tribes had reasserted their ancient claims over lands stolen from them by the predark government. Though hostilities between the tribes and non-Amerindians weren't as bloody as two hundred years earlier, people still traveled through their lands holding on to their topknots.

 

It was hard to believe that Zadfrak's family could have chased the Cheyenne and the Lakota and Ogallala Sioux out of the Black Hills, no matter how well armed he claimed Helskel to be.

 

Ryan finally fell into a fitful sleep, dreaming in fragments of a great bat-winged evil hovering overhead, of something as ancient as the land they traveled across. It was a dream of flight and pursuit and grinning, demonic faces.

 

The brief trilling of a songbird awakened him at daybreak. Peering out through the tent flap, he saw the sky was gray with "wolf's tail," the oyster hue of false dawn.

 

Careful not to disturb Krysty, Ryan took his gunbelt and crawled out of the tent, softfooting behind the wag to relieve himself. Buttoning up, he peered around the wag to see if Zadfrak was still asleep.

 

He was gone, his borrowed sleeping bag zipped open and spread out on the ground. Ryan made a quick circuit of the perimeter of the camp, but saw no sign of J.B. or anyone who had replaced him on watch. Checking the tents, he saw everyone was accounted forexcept for Doc and J.B.

 

There was no sign of a struggle, and he knew, as uneasy as his sleep had been, the slightest odd sound would have snapped him awake. He saw by the lightening sky a few footprints in the hard-packed earth around Doc's tent, which led toward the riverbank.

 

Ryan started to walk in that direction and hadn't gone far when he heard laughing voices over the rush of the current. Though he couldn't make out the words, he identified the tones as belonging to J.B. and Doc.

 

Realizing he'd been holding his breath, Ryan released it in a sigh. He slowed his pace.

 

Then he heard the scream.