Chapter Eight

 

The stairwell was pitch-black and cold. Even with the hidden nuke generator that still possessed enough juice to keep the freezies on ice and bring the oddly configured mat-trans room safely online, apparently there was nothing left over for illumination except for the essentials needed back in the subbasement.

 

Alton took out a small pocket flashlight and started rapidly squeezing a trigger over and over. A whirring sound came from the tiny device as a beam of light shot out of the clear plastic end. "Self-generating. Long as my finger doesn't give out, we got some light," he said proudly. "You want me to take the lead?"

 

"You've got the light. Don't worry, I'll back you up." Ryan turned back to his own group. "We go up until we're out. Take it nice and slow, and we should be all right. I don't like traveling practically by feel, but we don't have any other options."

 

The steady climb upwards was uneventful, except for a brief moment of chaos when Dean inadvertently stepped on something small and alive, losing his footing and falling backward into an unprepared Doc Tanner. Other than a boomed "By the Three Kennedys!" exclamation from the surprised Doc, there were no injuries.

 

No one knew what Dean's foot had found, and none of the assemblage wanted to find out, either.

 

Onward the group traveled, past levels of different colorsblue, orange, and red. Alton tried one stairwell door, and it opened into a wide corridor that led into a ruined chapel, the stained glass shattered, the pews ripped up from the flooring and removed. The light beam coming from the hand-powered flashlight picked out brief images of the desecration before Alton closed the door. "Wrong floor," he said.

 

The next level proved to be correct, depositing them first in a once-glassed-in corridor that was now nothing more than some empty framework that led out to a parking deck.

 

Rusting frames of automobiles lined the sides of the deck. Some of the designated slots were empty, but most still housed the remains of their former tenants of rubber, chrome and steel. A Cadillac Seville over here, a Chevrolet Lumina over there. Any part of value had been long since scavenged, leaving gaping holes beneath the hoods and inside the interiors. Engine blocks were MIA, along with head- and tail-lights and any other instruments that could be used elsewhere in the mass of retrofitting that kept automobiles and wags moving along in what passed for the society of Deathlands. All that was left of the cars and trucks housed in the deck were the frames and the metal wheels.

 

"Triple cold in here," Dean said with a shiver, hugging his jacket close to his body.

 

"Nothing around us but concrete. Walls. Floor. Ceiling. Feels damp," Krysty said.

 

"Not like," Jak said quietly. "Get hell out. Like open."

 

"I prefer open spaces myself, Jak," Ryan agreed. "At least you can always see what's coming."

 

"Where are we?" J.B. growled, already annoyed he couldn't deduce their location for himself without his glasses and proper vision.

 

"Carolina. The northern part, near the Blue Ridge Mountains. Go up about fifty miles or so, and you'll be in the lower part of Virginia," Alton replied.

 

"The South rises yet again," Doc murmured.

 

At least with having the scavie along, there was no need for J.B. to take out his small but sturdy mini-sextant and take a reading to determine their location. At one time, the Armorer had access to one of the finest collections of predark maps and atlases in the country, thanks to the supply the Trader had collected and kept aboard his own vehicle over the years.

 

Now, without the Storage space provided by the fleet of war wags the Trader had maintained, J.B. had to rely on his memory. There was no room in his pack for heavy books and maps. A man on the move had to travel as light as possible, with the weight he carried devoted to ammunition and essential supplies.

 

Luckily J.B. possessed a near photographic memory, and he had managed the feat of retaining thousands upon thousands of roads, borders, star charts and anything else of use in the fine art of navigation. When his own internal library of information was combined with the reading he could retrieve from the minisextant, J.B. could almost always tell his friends with a fair degree of accuracy what part of Deathlands they ended up in.

 

"This area doesn't look all that rural," Krysty observed, leaning out over the railing of the deck and into the afternoon sunshine, which cascaded beautifully off her red hair. "Looks more like a city."

 

"It is. It was. This is Winston-Salem, one of the bigger metro areas of old Carolina. Made cigarettes here. You can see what's left of the downtown over there," Alton said, pointing out a cluster of skyscrapers beyond the tall redhead. "I don't recommend going there for a sight-seeing tour."

 

"Why's that?" Krysty asked.

 

"Stickies," the bearded man replied. "Downtown belongs to them. For a long stretch of time, there's been an unspoken truce between the Carolina norms who live in this region and the mutiesstay away from the claimed grounds and there'll be no fighting or retribution."

 

Doc had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. "And do tell, where does this hospital fall?"

 

The scavenger smiled. "No-man's-land. Stickies are technically closer, but since anything of conceivable practical use had been long taken out, I was gambling there would be no reason for them to be in here."

 

"Only a fool gambles with a retarded deck of cards, and any group of stickies is full of jokers and deuces," Ryan said. "There is no rhyme or reason as to what they do and when they do it. Crazy bastards."

 

"Amen, brother," Alton agreed. "Still, we could be in worse shape. We're in the middle of what used to be called Medical Row. Go along Hawthorne for about two miles until you hit what's left of Silas Creek Parkway and Highway 40. Nothing in between but a few residential sections and rows upon rows of doctors' offices. Had a doc for any ailment that plagued you back then."

 

"Not anymore," Mildred said quietly to Ryan. "I knew this placespent some time at this very hospital, in fact. By the 1990s, North Carolina had some of the finest physicians and medical equipment in the entire country."

 

"The old road's still intact more or less. We'll follow it toward Freedom. I've got some business there, and it'll give us a safe place to spend the night What's wrong?" Alton allowed his voice to trail off as he tried to comprehend the sudden dark expressions that crossed the faces of Ryan's group upon the mention of the word "Freedom."

 

"This Freedomthat the name of some kind of ville?" Ryan asked, his mind involuntarily crawling back to another Freedom, the Freedom City Motor Hotel and Casino, located in the southeastern part of the Carolinas. It was the lair of the former Baron Willie Elijah and his mutie-hating mercies, the site of a vicious battle with Lord Kaa, a self-styled "lord of the mutants" who had confronted Elijah and his humans in a brutal fight ending in the baron's ultimate demise.

 

"Yeah, sort of," the scavie replied with a grin. "But better. You got to see it to believe it."

 

"Already have," J.B. said firmly. "Don't want to go back, either."

 

"No, this is a different Freedom," Ryan replied. "Has to be."

 

"What's the Southern fascination with the word freedom anyway? Seems half the places we've ended up in the Carolinas has been named 'Freedom' this or 'Freedom' that," Dean groused.

 

"White guilt," Mildred guessed.

 

That got J.B.'s attention. "Huh? I don't get you, Millie."

 

Doc was quick to offer his interpretation, delighted at the opportunity in fact, J.B. thought glumly. "The War Between the States was triggered by many pivotal events, John Barrymore, one of which was the thorny subject of slavery. The white overlord and his darker-hued property. Those in power in the South said they needed the slave labor to maintain their fields, and when President Lincoln signed his fateful proclamation, mounting tensions went beyond discussion and boiled over into full-scale conflict. The South seceded from the North, and there was holy hell to pay."

 

"Everyone pays the freight in a war, Doc," the Armorer replied.

 

"Indeed. After the war, many of the more forward thinkers in the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia and so on entered into a spell of overkill, and in response to the new freedom of the black man, a freedom that did not fully come until decades later during the famed civil-rights movement, the name Freedom worked its way into many a new Southern building or street. The traditions continued well into the late 1900s, and up to sky dark."

 

"Well, that's one interesting thing about the end of the worldit tends to be a great equalizer," Mildred quipped with little amusement.

 

 

 

HOURS LATER, after making their way down from the parking deck to the road below, Mildred was feeling much better. She whistled a slightly off-key fragment of a bouncy tune, snapping her fingers in accompaniment. The beaded strands of her plaited hair clacked softly as she moved her head in time to the music.

 

"What's that you're whistling, Millie?" J.B. asked, trying vainly to identify the music. "Sounds familiar, somehow."

 

"Before your time, John," she replied, pausing to breathe deeply of the mountain air. "Way before your time. Came from an old television show. So old, it was in black and whitenot color. The show always started the same. The opening credits would show a father and his barefoot son walk down an old back road to a lake, fishing poles over their shoulders."

 

"Kind of like you and me, Dad," Dean interjected. "Except we haven't gone fishing in a triple-long time."

 

"Don't interrupt," Ryan replied to his son. "Mildred's talking."

 

"Show took place in North Carolina, and that's what I always think of when I think about this area. Back roads and fishing," Mildred continued. "Damned if this place doesn't look just like what I remember from the series, even if it is part of Deathlands."

 

"Television," Doc snorted disdainfully. "Mind rot. I regret the loss of the films of the world, but I cannot say the same about what was dubbed 'the idiot box.' Too many hours of potential achievement were wasted staring at the daily parade of misfits and dysfunctional families on a never ending barrage of so-called talk shows, programs where the talking consisted of nothing but screaming and accusations over intentional betrayals between men and women of ill repute and worse behavior."

 

"I'll take a little mind rot over senility any day, you old fool," Mildred said with a chuckle. "Besides, from the sounds of it, you wasted more than a few hours of your own life watching the daily parade of the misfits."

 

"At times, dear Doctor, that was all I was allowed to do to pass the time during my incarceration. And I can assure you, my jailers gave no choice of channels."

 

Mildred fell silent after that.

 

 

 

THE PARTY OF EIGHT continued to follow the broken pavement of the old Hawthorne Road. Extra care had to be given to watching where they stepped, as the road was pitted with small holes that could easily twist an ankle or cause a fall. At times, the blacktop disappeared entirely to be replaced with a mix of lush, ankle-high green grass and the hardy, small white daisies that seemed to bloom throughout Deathlands. After Mildred had stopped reminiscing, a slight pall seemed to hang over the group. About a mile into their trip, the silence had become almost tangible.

 

Ryan took notice of the lack of sounds in the air. Before there had been faint reminders that life was still here among the ruinsthe hum of insects, the discussions between the arguing friends, the sound of footsteps rising and falling on the road. Now it was almost as if each of them had subconsciously started trying to move more silently, a hidden command to breathe easy and keep noise to a minimum.

 

The absence of bird calls was especially noticeable. Once, Krysty had wordlessly tugged at Ryan's long coat. When he glanced back, he couldn't help but see she was troubled, as well. Her sentient red hair was coiling and uncoiling in a manner that indicated that she, too, subconsciously knew something was wrong.

 

Still, the tree-lined roadway gave all indications of being safe, and their guide had no problems with striding ahead without fear. Alton apparently knew where he was going, and the closer they got, the more at ease he acted.

 

"Been a while since I got out this way," he said. "Like you, I been traveling myself. Back and forth with no permanent place to hang my hat."

 

Dean, bored out of his young mind and looking up at the blue sky, noticed the movement in the trees first. His keen eyes detected a slight movement in the leafy covering of a particular large tree directly next to the scavie's head. The mighty oak's branches were hanging out like spread wooden fingers over the asphalt path they were traveling.

 

He thought about mentioning it, but he didn't want to look like a stupe over a squirrel or other arbor-dwelling creature. Besides, his father didn't seem to be worried, and the boy knew Ryan's survival senses were honed by experience to a much finer edge than his own. As Alton and then Ryan both passed under the long branches, Dean held his breath until they were on the other side.

 

The boy exhaled with relief.

 

Until the leaves parted with a sudden, frantic rustling, and the hidden men leaped out and were upon them.