Chapter Five

 

 

For seven hours the wag had been traveling across a stretch of highway that barely qualified as a footpath. The asphalt was cracked, split, furrowed, wrinkled and overgrown with scraggly weeds. On either side were wide featureless expanses of dark earth. Far ahead, the dome-shaped peaks of the Black Hills shouldered the sky. Rising above them was the snow-capped Harney Peak, the highest point in Deathlands east of what remained of the Rockies.

 

The relatively smooth surface of the highway had deteriorated with every mile they logged. Zadfrak, drifting in and out of lucidity, neglected to inform J.B. of that fact. More than once he had been forced to engage the wag's front-wheel drive to get them over sections of highway that had completely caved in. Everyone was jounced, bounced, tossed and thoroughly pummeled. It occurred to Ryan that if the rad cancer didn't kill Zadfrak, the trip home certainly would. However, they should have known that a halfway decent stretch of road was more of an anomaly than a standard. Over a hundred years earlier, "earthshaker" bombs had completely resculpted the Cific coast.

 

New mountains had appeared almost overnight, long-dormant volcanoes had erupted and month-long earthquakes had shaken thousands of square miles with cataclysmic shocks and tremors.

 

A time or two their rad counters registered readings wavering uncomfortably close to the orange sector, but the "warm zones" were quickly bypassed.

 

J.B. suddenly leaned forward, peering through the ob slit, and relaxed the pressure on the gas pedal. He pointed. "Something up ahead."

 

Ryan followed the pointing finger and for a moment couldn't identify the shapes he saw lining the right side of the roadway. Purely from habit, he drew his SIG-Sauer. Even when he finally identified the shapes as harmless, he didn't leather it.

 

Affixed to six-foot-tall wooden poles were grinning human skulls, bleached by the sun and scoured by the wind. Small holes had been drilled in the tops of the craniums, and projecting from them were colorful spinning pinwheels. The brightly hued vanes fluttered cheerfully in the breeze.

 

J.B. came to a stop near the first skull. Ryan counted ten more, planted at fifty-foot intervals on the edge of the road. Turning to the passenger compartment, he said, "Zadfrak. You awake?"

 

The man raised his head from the floor. His eyes were sunken, surrounded by dark rings. "Yeah?"

 

"What are these bastard skulls supposed to mean?"

 

Zadfrak's dry lips peeled back from his discolored teeth in a grin. "Signposts. And warnings to the Injuns. Those are the skulls of red men. Put a couple of 'em up myself. When you reach the last one, take a hard right."

 

He coughed and then, in a cracked, sandpapery voice, sang, "One little two little three little Indians"

 

Mildred put a hand over his mouth and shoved his head back down to the floor. "Shut up," she said in a monotone. "Not another word or I'll gag you with the tip of my boot."

 

Ryan and J.B. exchanged a long look, then the wag began to move again. Just past the tenth signpost was a path that at first glance was no more than a shallow trench raked through the dirt. J.B. turned the vehicle onto it.

 

It was a rugged, rocky roadway surrounded by castellated hills. The suspension of the Land Rover creaked and groaned so loudly that Ryan wondered if the wag could take the roughing.

 

The narrow road swerved around rock formations and gullies, and Krysty swore as the vehicle yawed and she nearly fell from her seat. The area looked like hell with the fires out. An ancient sea bottom of clay strata worn by aeons of frost and flood had been shaped into forms resembling colossal pagodas and pyramids. Throat and eye-burning vapors arose from burning coal seams in the ground, cloaking their surroundings with a noxious fog.

 

The path swung down into a dry arroyo with a lazy serpentine motion. Pebbles rattled noisily beneath the Land Rover's wheels and chassis. J.B. suddenly slowed the vehicle to a crawl, hitting the brakes and downshifting.

 

It was late afternoon, with sunlight slanting through the dust. Children played in the warmth, mothers lay upon old mattresses on the ridge, dogs yapped and bounded all about.

 

The children, unnerved by the lion roar of the wag's engine, ran squalling up the sides of the bank. Their mothers beckoned to them and stared at the wag with a combination of fear, hostility and open curiosity.

 

"I think this is the place," Ryan stated.

 

J.B. urged the vehicle another two hundred feet into the arroyo and braked. The mothers and children stood above them on the edge of the ridge and stared down.

 

Turning to Krysty, Ryan asked, "Feel anything, lover?"

 

She narrowed her green eyes. "Not danger exactly, but certainly no friendliness. Curiosity mainly. Want me to get out and talk to them?"

 

"No, I'll make the contact," Ryan said, holstering his blaster. "Keep the engine running and your fingers on the triggers. Orange alert."

 

Opening the door, Ryan stepped out, hands held well away from the butt of his blaster. One of the women was closer than the others. She was a slim, curly haired female dressed in a ragged shift with the hemline at her upper thighs. A little boy was trying to crawl up one of her legs.

 

"Afternoon," said Ryan, pasting a friendly smile on his face.

 

The woman only nodded.

 

"Is this the way to Helskel?"

 

She nodded again.

 

"How far?"

 

She parted her pale lips. Her voice was creaky, as if she were unaccustomed to using it. "Half a mile. Less."

 

"Thanks. Do you know a man named Zadfrak? We're looking for his family."

 

The woman's small eyes suddenly narrowed. "Why?"

 

Before Ryan could answer, a whip crack split the air, and a fountain of dirt erupted from the arroyo floor a foot in front of him. Even as the dust spurted, Ryan hinged backward against the wag, the SIG-Sauer springing from its holster into his hand.

 

To jump back inside the Land Rover would require a couple of seconds, an eternity in which he would be exposed to bullets. Crouching behind one of the armored flanges protecting the wheel wells, Ryan peered up at the lip of the ridge. He saw the woman and children scuttling away.

 

The gun ports opened in the wag, and he heard the rear door handle turning. "No," he commanded sternly. "Everyone stay inside."

 

A second shot winged past, buzzing like a furious bee. Ryan looked over the wheel well, tracking for a target. He was angry at Zadfrak. He should have warned them to expect an attack, but then again, the one-eyed man should have expected one, as well. Ambushes were part and parcel of life in Deathlands.

 

A third steel-jacketed bullet spanged off the wag's heavy metal hide, leaving a shiny smear on the bodywork to commemorate its impact.

 

"Hey, you crazy bastards!" Ryan shouted. "I'm not impressed!"

 

There was a rustling from the brush at the crest of the arroyo's bank, and a hoarse voice inquired, "You armed?"

 

"Of course."

 

"What do you want?"

 

"We're returning a favor. Got a sick man here who says he's from Helskel. We're bringing him home."

 

"What's his name?"

 

"Zadfrak."

 

There was a long period of silence, then Ryan could hear faint whispers. The voice shouted, "Okay, it's cowboy time. Stand up, blaster by the barrel."

 

The six-inch barrel of Jak's Colt Python protruded from the gun port over his head, and Ryan heard the youth say, "Got in my sights. Three men rifles."

 

Ryan stood slowly, holding his blaster by the barrel. As if waiting for a cue, three men broke out of the shrubbery at the lip of the ridge. Their beards and long hair were matted with dust and twigs, and they wore the ragged remnants of shorts. Battered tennis shoes covered their feet, and though their rifles looked as if they had seen better days, they used them carefully to cover him and the wag.

 

A burly man with a mass of curly dark hair confined by a leather thong leapt down the bank, cradling a bolt-action Remington mountain rifle in his arms. Though he was grinning, his eyes held the alert, wary look of a half-wild animal.

 

He dropped lightly onto the arroyo's floor and approached Ryan, the wide grin never faltering. He looked over the Land Rover and said, "Nice wag. Where do you find the gas for it?"

 

Ryan shrugged. "Here and there. Can I put my hands down now?"

 

The man responded to the question with one of his own. "What's your name?"

 

"Cawdor."

 

He nodded. "Thought so. One-eyed man with a SIG-Sauer. Heard of you. Used to ride with the Trader. Yeah, you can put your hands down."

 

Ryan did so, but he didn't leather the blaster. "What's your name?"

 

"Phil. The other two gentlemen are known as Dog and Suds."

 

"Who's who?"

 

Phil indicated the taller of the pair. "This is Suds."

 

If Suds had ever introduced a drop of water to his face, he might have been fairly good-looking. As it was, his skin was almost black with encrusted dirt. Straight raven hair was gathered in a knot at the base of his neck. A cloud of gnats hovered around him.

 

"This here's Dog."

 

Dog was short and fair-complected, and he was one of the ugliest mortals Ryan had ever seen. The left side of his face was covered by red, puckered weal, a badly healed scar that lifted his lip on that side revealing brown, cavity-ridden teeth in a permanent grin. His hair was shaggy and dirty, and at one time might have been blond. The irises of his eyes were a yellow-brown.

 

"Dog ain't got no tongue," Phil went on. "Had it shot out of his head by a Lakota. Can't talk, but Jesus God, is he mean."

 

Dog looked at Ryan out his yellow eyes and grunted. Saliva dripped from his lip on the left side of his mouth.

 

Ryan noticed one similarity that all three men shared a lack of an X carved into their foreheads.

 

"You're not Zadfrak's family," Ryan stated.

 

Phil shook his head. "Novitiates. We're Farers, trying out for Helskel's militia. Right now we're part-time sec men, not full-time X-men."

 

Farers were a loosely knit but far-flung group of nomads who traveled the midwestern Deathlands, trading goods, foodstuffs and even themselves to villes.

 

"Yeah, a real nice wag," Phil said, walking around the Land Rover and kicking the front tire. "What would you trade for it?"

 

"Nothing."

 

Phil grinned. "We could just appropriate it, if you don't want to bargain."

 

"Could try. I should point out that at least five blasters are pointed at you from the inside." Ryan lifted the SIG-Sauer but didn't aim it. "Not to mention the one out here. I doubt you small-timers could take all of us."

 

Dog made a slobbering sound. Ryan smiled coldly, knowing that the three men would either start a firefight they couldn't win or knuckle under.

 

Phil continued to grin, but there was a trace of uncertainty in his eyes. "Don't get fused, man. You said you had a passenger, a Family member?"

 

"Yeah. He's sick."

 

"Come on into Helskel, then. Strangers are always welcome."

 

He turned and began trudging down the arroyo. Dog and Suds lingered behind. When Ryan made a move to open the passenger-side door, Dog jammed the bore of the rifle into his spine.

 

Over his shoulder, Phil said, "You walk with us. Your pals are less apt to get nervy with their blasters if you're on the road with us."

 

The rifle barrel prodded Ryan's kidney, and whirling quickly, he backfisted the length of steel away. "Back off, friend."

 

Dog growled and lunged forward, swinging the rifle, trying to shatter Ryan's profile with the wood-grain stock. The one-eyed warrior dropped to the ground, knocking his adversary's legs out from under him with a swift leg sweep. Dog went down heavily on his back with a crunch of gravel.

 

Springing erect, Ryan put the bore of the SIG-Sauer on Suds and booted Dog expertly beneath the chin with his right foot. His victim's head snapped back and met the arroyo floor with a thud. Ryan kicked the Remington from his slack fingers, and it clattered over the rocks end over end.

 

Phil was staring at him. His grin had been replaced by an O of surprise. He looked at Dog, dazed and twitching in the dust, and said faintly, "I hope you didn't kill him."

 

"No. I'm riding into Helskel in my wag, with my people, with Zadfrak. You three'll lead us. You try to run, you try to lead us into an ambush, I'll put six bullets along the buttons of your spine. Acceptable?"

 

Phil nodded. He and Suds helped the groggy Dog to his feet.

 

Ryan climbed into the wag and said to J.B., "I guess we've been formally welcomed."

 

After less than a mile the arroyo opened into a wide flat plain with cultivated fields. The crops were wheat, corn and beans. Beyond the fields was Helskel.

 

The overall design of the place was a confusing mishmash of architecture circus tents, geodesic domes, Quonset huts and lean-tos. The main part of the ville looked like a standing set from an old Hollywood western vid. The wag wheeled up the main thoroughfare, following Phil, Dog and Suds.

 

Helskel was one great open market, where nearly anything could be bought or sold. Shops and stalls were brightly painted. Vendors with wheelbarrows cried out the merits of their wares, jolt merchants were shouting "today only" special deals and wandering musicians played a discordant variety of tunes, few of them recognizable.

 

Men and women on motorcycles roared up and down, back and forth along the streets, throwing choking clouds of dust into the air. Ryan noted that all the cycles looked new, with fresh paint, highly polished chrome and the sounds of healthy engines.

 

A large number of people sporting Xs on their foreheads wandered everywhere, a curious conglomeration of all races and ages, dressed and undressed in every imaginable fashion. A few men sporting shaven pates and the X scars trooped about. They wore mirrored sunglasses, carried compact Tec-10 machine pistols and wore gray corduroy vests decorated with hanks of human hair. They might as well have carried signs labeling them sec men.

 

Most people on the street shuffled, stumbled or lay about, busily doing whatever occurred to them at the moment. One girl, completely naked except for looping whorls of blue paint, danced alone atop the rusting, wheelless husk of an old wag, moving in time to the soundless music of invisible instruments. The hot metal of the roof had to have been burning her bare feet, but she didn't seem to notice.

 

"The bastard spawn of the predark," Mildred muttered.

 

"Lilies of the field," Doc said. "They toil not, nor do they spin."

 

Zadfrak, on the floor of the Land Rover, was completely unconscious, not responding to Krysty telling him that he was home.

 

The dusty avenue went past hovel and tent and crude shack, until it opened in a large central square. Phil stopped in the middle of the street and pointed to a three-story wooden-frame structure, the only building in the square. "The Patriarch needs to look you over before any other business gets done."

 

Climbing out of the Land Rover, Ryan said, "Your man needs medical attention."

 

"That can wait. Got to make sure you fit in."

 

Everyone disembarked, J.B. making a very exaggerated show of pocketing the ignition key. Even if a thief cracked the steering column in an attempt to hot-wire the wag, an electric circuit was connected to a small but frightfully destructive package of plastic explosive inside the firewall.

 

Phil gestured toward the bat-winged doors, and Ryan led his party inside.

 

If it hadn't been for the electric light fixtures and silent, glowing jukebox in the far corner, the saloon might have been mistaken for a watering hole of two hundred years earlier. The bar top, the tables and the floor were exceptionally clean, and brass footrails and spittoons gleamed with a high polish. From the distance came the faint throb of an electric generator.

 

Mildred, standing beside Ryan, suddenly froze and said, "Oh my God. The Family. Helskel. I should've been able to put the pieces together. Zadfrak wasn't talking about Man's Son's country. He meant Manson's country."

 

"What mean?" Jak asked.

 

"Charles M. Manson," Mildred replied. "Look."

 

Following her pointing finger, they gazed at the huge mural mounted on the wall behind the bar. It depicted in gold and brown Charlie Manson's final ascent into heaven, amid joyous welcome from angels above and remorse from the deluded souls below. The deluded souls had human bodies, but their heads were those of swine.

 

Near the top of the mural stood God, smiling beatifically as he beckoned his second only begotten son with widespread arms.

 

"Blasphemy," Doc muttered. "Sick. Depraved."

 

"Who the hell is Charles Manson supposed to be?" J.B. demanded impatiently.

 

"Our spiritual savior," a soft, hollow voice replied. "He who shaped Deathlands into the image of paradise he foresaw over a century ago."

 

The vision of the mural had taken everyone aback for a moment, so they hadn't immediately noticed the man sitting against the north wall. He was a vision almost as startling as the mural.

 

The man's body was lanky, and very thin. Beneath a thick shock of upstanding jet black hair, rose a remarkably high forehead. It was impossible to gauge his age. He had one of those smooth, unlined faces that would always look the same between the ages of twenty-five and sixty-five. His eyes were in shadow, but there was something, some force swimming in them that raised the fine hairs on Ryan's nape. It was a spark of self-centered dedication to a single goal, a single-minded drive to attain an inexplicable objective.

 

The man's hands were very long, and he had them steepled before his pursed mouth. He was dressed completely in whitewhite blazer, white shirt, white tie, white trousers and shoes. There wasn't a single speck of color anywhere on him. He was sitting in a large fan-backed wicker chair.

 

"Shades of Somerset Maugham," Doc whispered to Mildred.

 

Phil stepped up to the white-suited man and ducked his head. He spoke to him rapidly in a low whisper for quite awhile, then gestured to Ryan.

 

The leader of the companions approached the chair and the man suddenly waved a hand. "Far enough, kindly," he said. "You are covered with road dust and exude a frightful odor."

 

Ryan didn't bother to swallow his irritation. "If I'd known we'd be meeting, I'd have bathed in rose water and disinfectant."

 

The thin man eyed him broodily. "You've an intrusive tongue. Did I ask you a question? No matter. Phil tells me your name is Cawdor."

 

"That is true."

 

" Ryan Cawdor, I presume."

 

"Yeah."

 

"He tells me you've brought Zadfrak back to us."

 

"True again."

 

"Why?"

 

"Because he asked us. He's sick."

 

The thin man stirred. "I know that, Ryan Cawdor. I also know that I cast Zadfrak out of the Family. Disowned him, stripped him of his rights and set him loose in Deathlands to die. Returning him here is a great affront."

 

"Zadfrak didn't mention that. We owed him a debt, and he wanted to be returned to Helskel. That's all there is to it."

 

The man smiled in an odd, cold way. "I don't think I believe you. I think you came here to make mischief."

 

Ryan returned the cold smile. "Oh?"

 

"There could be no other reason."

 

There was a shuffling behind Ryan, then a barely audible click. He spun, hand darting to his blaster. In a jagged fragment of a second he saw that the entire wall backing the jukebox had swiveled open, disgorging seven of the shaven-headed X-scarred men, all aiming large-caliber handblasters. Some were automatics, some were revolvers, but all looked brand-new.

 

The cold tip of a gun touched the back of Ryan's neck. He heard the sound of a round being jacked into a chamber and froze, hand on the butt of the SIG-Sauer.

 

The thin man held up one narrow hand. "That bloodies the floor, much as you'd enjoy it. There are other ways."

 

The white-clad man stared at him with shadow-pooled eyes. Ryan's mind sensed a whispering touch, like an invisible, wispy cobweb brushing him with ectoplasmic tentacles. His heart began to pound. The man was a psionic, a line-of-sight telepath. He wasn't necessarily a mutie, but norms with true telepathic abilities were extremely rare. Extrasensory and precognitive perceptions were the most typical abilities possessed by muties who appeared to be normal.

 

The vague touch disappeared, and he heard Krysty draw in her breath sharply. The man in the white suit suddenly stiffened, and Ryan guessed that the mind probe had been directed at Krysty and met unexpected resistance.

 

"Your woman is a telepath?" the man demanded. He paused, then added in a meditative tone, "No, an empath. A doomseer. But with formidable abilities."

 

"You're not so unique after all," Krysty said.

 

A smile drifted onto the man's angular face. "Very true. My name is Lars Hellstrom." His tone was much more relaxed. "Sorry about the coldness of the reception, but we can't be too careful with all the anarchist crazies and night-creeping Indians running loose these days."

 

"I agree," Ryan replied. He could hear the person behind him breathing. The pressure of the gun bore was still against the back of his neck, and he considered disarming the bastard, but Hellstrom raised a languid hand.

 

"Hold on that, Fleur. I've scanned him. He's not an enemy. At least, not yet."

 

The pressure of the gun barrel was removed, and hearing the rhythmic clacking of boot heels on wood, Ryan turned slightly.

 

The tallest woman he had ever seen walked slowly around him, giving him the briefest of appraising glances. A black .380 Beretta 85-F dangled from her right hand. She looked to be only half an inch shy of Ryan's six feet, two inches. Her face might have been beautiful if not for the grave, joyless expression she wore, the X scar on her forehead and the gold-embroidered black patch covering her left eye.

 

There was an air of dangerous assurance about her, of knowing precisely what her abilities were and how superior they were to others. However, that quality, coupled with her manner of dressbrown leather jacket, skintight jeans and knee-high black bootsdidn't detract from the femininity exuding from the smoothly chiseled features, one cobalt blue eye and the luxuriant waist-length fall of dark mahogany hair. A fourteen-inch bowie knife was scabbarded crosswise across her belly.

 

The woman squirmed into a comfortable position on Hellstrom's lap, and he absently fondled her upper thigh. "This is Fleur, my warlord. Looks like you and she have something in common, Cawdor, at least in the old glassie department. You both fall a little short of a twenty-twenty vid."

 

Fleur impaled Ryan with a blue glare. "I've never found it a problem," he said.

 

"You're a very adaptable fellow," Hellstrom replied.

 

Addressing the armed X-men, he declared, "Blasters down. It's secure for the moment."

 

Ryan made introductions all around and removed his hand from the SIG-Sauer, but went back to it when a commotion broke out behind him. Several sec men were dragging Zadfrak's limp form into the saloon. The backswing of the bat-winged doors dealt him a nasty crack on the head. He cried out, and Mildred made a move to intervene.

 

Krysty put a hand on her arm. "No," she breathed. "Great danger here."

 

Mildred subsided, but she favored the sec men with a ferocious glare.

 

Zadfrak was dropped roughly to the wooden floor, six feet in front of Hellstrom. Fleur arose from Hellstrom's lap and leaned against the back of his chair.

 

Crooking a long finger, Hellstrom gazed down at Zadfrak and said, "Come here."

 

The man tried to rise, but the meager reserves of strength contained in his diseased body were exhausted.

 

"On your belly, then," Hellstrom said. "By returning here after you were cast out, your status is less than an animal's."

 

Sickened, more than a little angered, Ryan watched as Zadfrak slowly and laboriously crawled toward Hellstrom's feet. His breath came in harsh, aspirated gasps.

 

"Why are you treating him like that?" Mildred asked, voice full of fury. "He's sick."

 

Without looking at her, Hellstrom snapped, "Mind your tongue. You have no idea of our Family's traditions."

 

"Agreed," Ryan said. "But the question still stands. Why are you humiliating this man?"

 

"You're a very cocky cat," Fleur said. She had a pleasant, melodic voice, despite the overtone of menace in it. "But guess what can chill you?"

 

"Another cliche?"

 

Fleur rushed from the back of the chair, cheeks reddening, hand raising the Beretta. Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer in one smooth motion. He had the bore on a direct line with her eye patch just as she centered the Beretta on his.

 

Hellstrom cried out, in a surprisingly pettish voice, "Freeze on that, Fleur, Cawdor!"

 

The woman froze, but she didn't lower her blaster. She reminded Ryan of a ravening beast of prey, preparing to spring. With a self-indulgent chuckle, Hellstrom reached up and drew Fleur back by the wrist.

 

He patted her buttocks, and she slowly tucked the blaster into a back holster beneath her jacket. She returned to her position behind the chair. She didn't take her eye off Ryan.

 

"You must forgive my warlord," Hellstrom said with a smile. "Fleur prefers a more active, physical type of debate rather than verbal oneupmanship. She can be rather difficult when she's feeling testy."

 

Ryan started to say something, thought better of it and leathered his pistol.

 

Zadfrak reached the base of Hellstrom's chair. His body went slack, but he managed to raise one violently trembling hand beseechingly. He spoke in a croaking whisper.

 

Ryan didn't understand what he said, but interest suddenly flickered in Hellstrom's dark eyes. Taking a white linen glove from the pocket of his blazer, he slipped it on his right hand and leaned forward. Grasping a handful of Zadfrak's sweat-drenched hair, he pulled the man's head up level with his knees and leaned forward.

 

When Zadfrak stopped whispering, Hellstrom gently lowered the man's head, allowing him to pillow it on his white-shod feet.

 

Stripping off the glove, Hellstrom tossed it on the floor and announced, "Zadfrak has been welcomed back into the Family, his past sins expunged, his status restored. He deserves a Family funeral and memorial service with all the attendant honors."

 

Gesturing to a pair of X-men, he said, "Take him to his old quarters. Make his last hours as comfortable and pain free as possible."

 

"Oversee the preparations of the pyre," he directed Fleur.

 

To Ryan, he said, "Of course, you and your people are invited to remain here. It was Zadfrak's last request that you be treated as honored guests of his Family."

 

Fluttering a hand through the air, he added, "Please avail yourself of Helskel's hospitality. There are spare rooms on the floor above, and you're welcome to them gratis. Your jack is no good here."

 

The skin between Ryan's shoulder blades crawled. He still sensed the half-dozen blaster bores behind him. None of the tension was evident in his voice when he said, "Thanks. We'll be pleased to visit for a while."