Chapter Ten

 

 

There were three of them, all dead for days and showing the beak marks where the birds had been at them. The carrion eaters hadn't been limited to the winged variety.

 

The youngest man looked to have been in his teens, and the oldest perhaps forty. They were dressed in a combination of homespun clothes and manufactured coats and vests that had obviously been handed down a long time. Gray duct tape, repeatedly applied, covered both elbows of the youngest man's jacket.

 

"Dark night," J.B. breathed.

 

Ryan waved them into defensive positions, settling in behind a tall oak tree himself.

 

They were quiet then, waiting to see if it was a trap they'd stepped into. The back of Ryan's neck prickled tight as he searched the darkness clinging to the forest. Nothing moved.

 

"Cover me," he said.

 

The three men hung from the trees in a clearing that looked to have been used as a campsite. Upon closer inspection the oldest and youngest resembled each other enough to have been related. Ryan felt they were possibly a father and son, or brothers. The third man was black, but his right cheek was puckered and pink from an old burn scar, possibly caused by acid.

 

All of them looked as if they were no strangers to violence.

 

The stench around the corpses was nearly unbearable. Ryan took a rag from his jacket pocket and tied it around his lower face. The material cut down on some of the stink, and breathing through his mouth helped, as well.

 

His stomach was tight as he walked into the clearing. Moonlight shafted through the tree branches and washed over the faces of the dead.

 

Standing almost within arm's reach of the men, the first thing Ryan noticed was that they hadn't died from being hanged. All three men's pants had been torn or cut open. Blood crusted the material around their flies, frozen where it had crept down their thighs.

 

Ryan used a self-light to take the guesswork out of what he was seeing. In the pale golden glow he held protectively in a cupped palm, he saw that all three men's cocks had been hacked off. The wounds weren't nice and even as if they'd been done with a knife or an ax. They were jagged and irregular, with puckers showing where flesh had been pinched together in the jaws of scissors or snips of some kind.

 

All three men had their hands tied behind their backs with vines. Their faces were marred by blood as well. Frozen crimson tears hung on their cheeks and stubbled jaw-lines. Small forked oak branches the length of Ryan's longest finger had been wound with single strings of mistletoe laden with white berries, then shoved through each man's eyes, puncturing the lids and penetrating deeply. The amount of blood testified they'd been alive when the sticks had been pushed through their eyes.

 

The self-light burned down to Ryan's fingers. He waved it out, then stuck the burned wooden stick into the frost to take away the heat. He pocketed it once it was cool, conscious of leaving no trail at all.

 

"It's safe enough," he told the others.

 

All of the companions surged forward. J.B. and Jak stayed long enough only to satisfy their own curiosity, then set up a loose perimeter guard.

 

"These corpses were left as a definite message to someone," J.B. said.

 

"Yeah, that's what I figure, too," Ryan replied. "Somebody marking territory. Bastard hard about drawing the lines when they went about it."

 

J.B.'s grin in the dark was white and mirthless. "No mistakes that way."

 

"That's a mean way to kill a man," Mildred said. Her face was stony as she looked impassively at the corpses. She worked a rag loose from her own pack and bound it around her mouth and nose. "Unless you had reason."

 

Ryan forced himself to go through their pockets. He turned up a few coins that he wasn't familiar with. Some looked manufactured, but there were a half dozen that looked as though they'd been hammered out by hand, often more oval than circular.

 

"From the way it looks," Krysty said, "some kind of justice was meted out here."

 

"Hunters," Jak commented. "Look clothes. Scuffed from going through brush. Crawling on ground. Mud stains on chest and knees. Pants double stitched, and legs tucked in boots keep crawling things out. Bags at waist. You look close. Game bags, mebbe."

 

Krysty gave the older man's corpse a push, causing it to swing around at the end of the rope. The branch it was tied to creaked overhead, protesting the shift in weight. Shards of ice rained down for a moment, slamming against the ground and dropping across the companions.

 

"Jak's right," Krysty said, lifting the back of the man's coat with the tip of her knife. She pointed to the canvas bag at the man's back hanging from short leather thongs.

 

"Could I see those coins?" Doc asked Ryan.

 

"Sure."

 

Doc took them and dropped them through his hands, examining them with animation.

 

"Somebody go to the trouble to leave a note like that," J.B. cautioned, "they might be inclined to wait around to see who comes checking on it. They don't, mebbe they come back to check on it regular."

 

"A couple minutes more," Ryan said, "and we'll be out of here. What's in the bag, Krysty?"

 

The red-haired women opened the drawstrings and peered inside the bag she'd taken from the dead man. "Looks like some kind of tubers." She took one out. It was wrinkled from dehydration and bent at almost a ninety-degree angle in the middle, the color of pumice and shot through with dark green veins. She sniffed it and started sneezing at once. "It's not like anything I've ever seen."

 

"Can I?" Mildred asked, reaching out a hand.

 

Krysty dropped the tuber in her hand.

 

"Upon my soul, friend Ryan," Doc said, glancing up. "These coins are English shillings. A half crown. There's a florin here that was out of manufacture though still in usage in the 1990s when I was around."

 

"I saw, Doc," Ryan said.

 

"Then we're back." Doc closed his hand around the coins and looked out at the landscape. "We're in England."

 

"Mebbe," Ryan said. "Don't get your hopes up. And if we are, getting back home's going to be tough."

 

"Do you mind if I keep these?" Doc asked.

 

Ryan shrugged. "Don't see as how I can use them."

 

Reaching into his pocket, the old man produced a weathered and scarred coin purse. He dropped the new coins in with a clink, then jingled it. "Now, there's a happy sound."

 

Even in the near-darkness, Ryan could see Doc's eyes glowing with the familiar light of the occasional madness that traveled with him. Being trawled through time, bereft of family, and thrown into situations that would have been impossible for most people to deal with had left its scars.

 

" 'Let all the learned say what they can, 'tis ready money makes the man,'" Doc quoted. "William Somerville, Ryan." He put the coin purse away and walked on toward the edge of the clearing. "Have you ever had a pint of English ale?"

 

"No," Ryan said. He signaled Jak to stay with the old man.

 

"We should look," Doc said. "Where there's an Englishman's pockets with coins in them for spending, there has to be a pub. The first dram is on me when we find it, and the loser of a gentlemanly game of darts shall buy the second." He turned at the far end of the clearing, barely visible in the gloom despite the frost and the moonlight. The deep breath he took was audible, then he expelled a gust of gray vapor. "Breathe in that clean English air. You've never had such nectar."

 

Jak remained in the brush, but hovered over the old man.

 

"Not food," Mildred said, inspecting the tuber. "Not even when it was fresh." She pinched off a small bit, crushed it between her forefinger and thumb, and smeared it against the inside of her lower lip. "Damn!" She doubled over and spit repeatedly.

 

"Poison?" Ryan asked.

 

Mildred made retching noises for a moment, then shook her head as she straightened. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her eyes were reddened and watery. "Far from it," she said in a hoarse voice.

 

Krysty popped the top on a ring-pull and passed it over.

 

Taking it, Mildred drank gratefully. "That," she said, holding the tuber out, "is some kind of narcotic. If I played with it enough and had access to a labeven a modestly supplied oneI could make anything from a local anesthetic to a righteous, foot-in-your-face recreational drug that would open up whole worlds for your amusement."

 

"Drugs," Ryan said.

 

Mildred nodded. "A mean one, too. Somebody fooling around with that stuff would have to be real careful, because the line between recreation and rigor mortis has got to be a thin one."

 

"Also means we're close to a civilization," Ryan announced. "Probably a large ville. Something like what you're talking about, people got to have time on their hands to build up enough fear and paranoia to use. Small ville barely making ends meet, left on their own, they won't put up with that kind of shit."

 

"There were more bags on this man's belt," Krysty said. She lifted the cut end of a small rope. "Somebody took them off."

 

"Whoever killed them," Jak said. "Protecting territory."

 

Ryan nodded. "Figures they won't be very hospitable to us if they find us poking around. J.B., head us out of here. I'll take the rear."

 

The group fell into line and began moving. Doc was slower than the others, still acting as if he were having trouble keeping things together.

 

They hiked through the dense forest for two more hours. Though fatigued, Ryan didn't hear any complaints from the others when he kept them moving. He changed positions with Jak first, then J.B.

 

They were through the valley now, heading uphill at a sharper grade.

 

Ryan maintained the lead, followed by Krysty, who was watching over Doc. The old man had teetered back from the abyss a while back, but the internal struggle had physically drained him, and he had to lean heavily on his swordstick.

 

The landscape continued to be thickly forested, but thinned somewhat as they traveled upward. The frost held a harder crust now, facing the windward side of the mountain.

 

Ryan signaled a breather, not for himself so much as for Doc. He found a flat shelf of rock sticking out from the mountainside and hunkered down to present a smaller target to the wind. He leathered the SIG-Sauer and pulled out the Steyr, holding on to it with both gloved hands and leaning on it for support.

 

The others went to ground less than fifty yards away, almost hidden from view by the tree line and the brush.

 

Jak crossed the distance to Ryan, covering the incline in an easy stride. The albino's cheeks were pinked from the cold, and his white hair blew in wild disarray. He dropped into position ten feet from Ryan, setting himself behind a gnarled pine tree that clung tenaciously to the mountainside.

 

"Doc not make it much more," Jak said.

 

"I know," Ryan replied. "I'm thinking mebbe we can find a place up a little farther. Someplace mebbe we can have a fire and get thawed out proper and be protected. I reckon we've come far enough that we're out of whoever's territory that was back there."

 

"Hope so."

 

"Come morning, I think we're going to find out. One way or the other." Ryan stood. "Want to scout the situation a little farther up with me?"

 

The youth nodded. "Stay still get cold. Don't like it." He stood and shook himself, tight and coordinated like a big cat.

 

"J.B."

 

The Armorer held up a hand.

 

"Take ten more," Ryan said. "If there's soup, drink it, but stay away from the heavy stuff. Don't want anybody getting sleepy from overeating. Me and Jak'll recce and be right back."

 

Ryan took the lead, holding his jacket a little more tightly to his chest. The sound of his feet breaking an iced-over puddle sounded incredibly loud to him, but he knew the wind wouldn't let it carry far.

 

 

 

"CAVE," JAK SAID.

 

Ryan looked into the shadows where the albino pointed. The frost wasn't as prominent at the top of the mountain range, but with the irregular surfaces and the sharp angles, details were blurred.

 

They'd climbed steadily for almost fifteen minutes by Ryan's chron. The incline had become steeper as the bite of the wind had grown steadily.

 

"Careful," Ryan admonished as the youth walked toward the area.

 

The brush and trees had been torn and twisted by the elements until they looked like mutie versions of themselves. That was one of the things bothering him they were at an area with a redoubt, yet the area was relatively free of the nuke destruction that was usually apparent around such spots. No scabbies. No stickies. The three men they'd found hanging looked perfectly normal except that someone had cut off their cocks with scissors and run mistletoe stakes through their eyes.

 

There was kind of a sick relief in that, he realized. Even though the nuke-blasted terrain seemed to be missing, reminding him constantly that they weren't in Deathlands, the common denominator of savagery and brutality remained. It would have been a hard thing, he told himself wryly, to have lost all forms of familiar security.

 

Jak walked nice and easy, as if he were out for a stroll instead of a recce. Ryan knew, though, that the appearance could be deceiving. He'd never seen anyone move as fast as Jak Lauren when danger threatened.

 

Ryan could see the mouth of the cave now. Tall enough for a man to pass through on his feet, it gaped like a wound in the wind-blasted stone. Shadows twisted at the core of it as they approached, but there were no signs of life.

 

Something flickered at the corner of his vision. He turned quickly and looked back down the mountain, freezing in his tracks. He wasn't sure what had alerted him.

 

At first he was going to acknowledge the itch across the back of his neck as a combination of fatigue and imagination, and the result of the mat-trans jump.

 

Then three flashes of light blossomed near the area where they'd found the hanging corpses.

 

Ryan froze, but no sound reached him. Another couple flashes splintered through the thick foliage, then they died away. He waited, letting a slow, careful breath seep through his teeth, the wind snaring the gray mist of it and razoring it to shreds that evaporated.

 

The growl drew his attention immediately.

 

Ryan spun, bringing the Steyr up before him, gripping the barrel in his other hand. Ahead of him Jak suddenly moved backward, one hand lifted up defensively while the other sprouted one of his leaf-bladed throwing knives. A gray-furred, muscular body followed him, growling, the ivory fangs slashing from out of thin black lips.

 

"Fuck!" Jak snarled as he went backward. His left hand had slid in behind the wolf's neck and gripped a handful of hide and hair. He wasn't able to restrain the beast, but he pushed it away enough that the jaws crashed together on empty space over his shoulder rather than his face.

 

As Ryan started forward, intending to help, the wolfs mate exploded from the cave with a deadly grace.

 

Wheeling, Ryan brought up the Steyr, placing it between the bitch's slavering jaws. Teeth crunched against the barrel, and the weight of the animal shoved him backward. He lost traction against a patch of frost and started to go down. The wolf stayed with him, loosing her hold on the rifle and making another attempt to sink her fangs into his flesh.

 

Ryan kicked out, fighting to keep her hind legs from ripping into his belly. He slammed a forearm into her face, creating some breathing room. Free of her for the moment, he rolled away, releasing the Steyr and pushing himself to his feet.

 

The wolf was already on him, launching herself like a gray arrow at his face.

 

 

Braced and ready, knowing he couldn't turn his back to her and that firing his blaster would draw the attention of everyone in the area, Ryan reached out and seized her front legs. Before she could bite him, he shifted his weight and used her momentum against her to throw her behind him.

 

The wolf landed in a twisting sprawl in the frost. Whirling in a frenzy, howling in impatience, she lunged back to her feet.

 

"No gun," Ryan said. He didn't have time to check on Jak. The panga came free in his hand in a heartbeat, and the wolf was on him. He didn't try to finesse her. He met her charge standing, knowing it would be over for one of them before the next breath was drawn.

 

Keeping his left arm crooked in front of his face, Ryan waited until the moment of impact, felt her slam against his chest and her breath hot against his left cheek. Then he levered his forearm up under her muzzle. A fang ripped skin along his left temple, but the rest missed him, chomping tight, the sound echoing in his ear. Working his weight from his hips, he spun and put everything he had into a vicious stab that arced around to the wolf's side.

 

The panga penetrated easily, hot blood spilling onto Ryan's palm and making his hand slick. He kept the grip, forcing his forearm up against the wolf again. Ruthlessly he dragged the panga across the animal's underbelly to the other side of the rib cage. Steaming loops of entrails flipped free of the abdomen and dropped onto the ground, scattering blood over Ryan's clothes.

 

He held on to the wolf until the fight for survival turned into spasmodic quivers. Yanking his knife free, he wheeled, ready to help Jak.

 

The albino was already on his feet. Beside him the great wolf was stretched out on a battlefield of blood, gutted. A deep incision started at the center of the beast's throat and ran straight back along his belly. Everything in between had spilled out in twisted coils.

 

Jak wasn't even breathing hard. His ruby eyes were glowing as he regarded Ryan. "No more."

 

"You sure?" Ryan checked the mouth of the cave, but it was silent and empty.

 

"Yeah."

 

Ryan knelt and cleaned the panga on the coat of the wolf he'd killed. He sheathed it and drew his blaster, then looked down into the valley.

 

"What?" Jak asked.

 

"Thought I saw something."

 

Jak looked with him, but the flashes didn't appear again. "Nothing now."

 

"Mebbe," Ryan admitted. He moved cautiously into the cave. The animal stink was intense. Taking a self-light from his cache, he struck it against the side of the cave.

 

The flame flared, then settled down to a cheery nimbus that filled most of the pave. It was about five paces across by four deep. The roof was low enough that Ryan had to stoop to keep from banging his head. At the back a chasm sank into the wall. Before he could get there to investigate, the self-light had burned down to his fingers. He lit another one and moved forward again.

 

The chasm ran back farther than he could see, but there was no animal smell in it. The flickering flame revealed a gentle breeze coming in through the cave mouth and blowing back through the chasm.

 

"Wolves not live there," Jak said. He sniffed again. "Nothing live there."

 

Ryan touched off one more self-light and examined the crack as much as he could. The sides were smooth, but had a rough texture, shaped by the elements rather than the hands of men. He took that as a positive. The passage appeared to narrow at times, but it remained big enough for him to walk through as long as he minded his head.

 

"Even if something else did live here," Ryan said, "if we post a guard, it'll have a hard time getting in." He dropped the self-light. "We need a place to hole up and get a few hours' rest. This is it as far as I'm concerned. Let's go get the others. We can bring up some wood for a fire."