Chapter Seventeen

 

Doc wandered back into camp less than an hour later, loaded down with vegetables and fruits he'd scavenged from the surrounding terrain. "Happily, my good friends," he said in a tired voice, "this hallowed ground does offer up a veritable cornucopia of victuals and refreshments. And you left the scent of yon fine birds basting in nature's juices over a slow fire to mark my way home." He made a production out of drawing in a deep breath through his nose, then sighed contentedly.

"What the hell's he saying?" Bud demanded.

"He's saying he found a lot of stuff and that the turkey smells good," Dean translated.

"Then why the fuck didn't he just say so?"

"He did," Dean said.

"And you understood him?"

"I've had some schooling." Dean said.

"You've had schooling?" Elmore asked from the other side of the fire.

"Sure," Dean replied. "Why?"

Elmore shrugged. "Just surprising is all."

"Heard of Nicholas Brody?" Dean asked.

"Seems like I have. Got a place down Colorado way."

"Went to school there for a while," Dean said. "Mebbe I'll go back some day."

Ryan swapped looks with Krysty, noting the thin smile that filled her pale face. It was the first time the boy had ever said that.

"Schooling can be a good thing," Elmore stated. "Provided that ain't all a man puts in his head."

"Schooling's for pussies," Bud said derisively.

"Waste of fucking time," Sandy added.

Dean swiveled his gaze toward the brothers. "You know how to do anything more than read and write your names?"

"Don't know how to do that," Sandy said.

"Don't see how we're going to need to," Bud replied.

"Least you could make sure somebody spelled it right on your marker you do something stupe that gets you chilled," Dean told them. Color touched his cheeks, and Ryan knew his son was a little embarrassed to have taken pride in something the other boys were determined to ridicule.

"For pussies," Bud repeated.

Sandy flipped Dean off, shoving his middle finger defiantly into the air.

The turquoise-handled knife appeared like magic in Dean's hands. "Be glad to trim that finger off for you if you can't control it," he stated in a low, cold voice. "And shove it up your ass for you if you want to keep it as a souvenir."

Morse glanced at Ryan, as if expecting him to back Dean off. Ryan returned the man's gaze without expression. Dean was old enough to start picking the fights he was going to stand up in, and to choose the things he was going to be willing to fight over.

Bud and Sandy suddenly didn't look so sure of themselves when no adults took a hand in the brimming argument.

Obviously angry over the turn of events, Morse stood and walked over to his sons. He slapped each of them on the head with quick hands. "You fuckers stop acting so stupe and shut your damn mouths."

"He started—" Bud said.

Before the boy could say another word, Morse backhanded him to the ground. Blood trickled from a split lip.

"Don't make your last mistake, boy," Morse snarled.

Bud pushed himself back into a sitting position but didn't say anything. Morse continued on to the campfire and poured a fresh cup of coffee sub and returned to his place.

Ryan ignored the exchange, but realized that Morse was more afraid of them than the man let on. The sailor also resented it, not being a man used to fear.

J.B. got another coffee refill, as well, squatting close to Ryan and speaking only so they could hear. "Made yourself an enemy," the Armorer commented.

"Know it," Ryan said.

"Best if we parted company with him soon as we can."

"You feel comfortable piloting Junie along this river during rainy season?"

"Nope."

"Me, neither."

J.B. took a sip of the coffee sub. "Going to have to keep an eye on him. Man gets that fearful of you—"

"He'll stick a shiv in your back just to try to convince himself he's immortal again," Ryan finished. It was something the Trader had taught them back on War Wag One. And it had proved true on a number of occasions.

SINCE THE MODEST DOC had gone into the brush in only his long underwear, he'd had to improvise on methods to carry the vegetables and fruits he'd found. Using some of the long yellow grasses that grew abundantly in patches along the broken countryside, he'd twisted them into a webbed harness with small pouches that carried wild onions, garlic, blackberries, green apples, mushrooms, strawberries and herbs he'd recognized even in the moonlight.

With Mildred's and Dean's help, Doc removed the turkeys from the spits over the fire long enough to stuff them with the onions, garlic, apple slices and herbs. In moments, the aroma drifting off the cooking birds turned even more enticing.

Ryan's stomach growled in anticipation.

While they waited, the water heated up in a big tub that had been brought over from Junie. Steam curled up from the edges, letting them know it was hot enough to cook whatever leeches clung to the clothing. Washing got under way, with each person taking care of his or her own gear. Only two sets of clothing at a time could be washed before the water was so foul with dog shit that any further washing had to be postponed until more water was heated.

There was a moment of consternation when a group of piranha pulled themselves up on shore and came at the campsite. A flurry of blows from makeshift clubs and rifle butts killed them out quick enough, and Ryan made sure all the corpses were kicked back into the water. He didn't know if there was a way to drain the poison out of the fish, but he didn't want Morse to have the opportunity to use it against them later.

BY THE TIME the turkeys were ready, so were most of the clothes. Ryan opted to pull his on and let them dry on him rather than hang them from the branches the way Jak and Dean did. Being dressed made him feel more ready to move.

Metal and ceramic plates from Junie's stores handled the food. There was also silverware. They all piled their plates high.

"Alas and alack," Doc moaned theatrically as he hunkered down with his back to a tree, "would that we might have been able to break bread with this meal."

"You'll be breaking wind soon enough after you stuff yourself," Mildred stated. "Judging from past performances."

Doc drew himself up. "Madam, you are ill-mannered."

"But truthful." Mildred smiled as she bit into a chunk of turkey breast she held in her fingers. "Anyway, if you had bread, you'd be moaning that you didn't have butter to go with it."

"In part," Doc admitted, "you are right. I should content myself on enjoying this fine repast we have managed for ourselves rather than lamenting what we do not have."

Ryan listened to the conversation but didn't take part. He ate with real appetite and turned his thoughts to what they were going to need to do to set things right. The meat tasted good, still managing to carry the flavor of the bird's own juices mixed in with the herbs and vegetables Doc had found. And the fruits carried clean, sharp flavors. He ate until near bursting, Krysty sitting beside him.

But they didn't talk. And Ryan was cognizant of the heavy silence between them even in the midst of the conversations circulating around them.

PHLORIN SPOKE. This is only part of the heritage you carry now within you.

For a moment, Krysty thought her mind had been bringing up an old nightmare. The witch's interjection, however, let her know the woman was controlling what she was seeing. She remembered lying next to Ryan, smelling the dampness that lingered in his clothes, making the detergent in them a little stronger. And she thought she remembered when he'd gotten up to relieve J.B. on watch.

But she wasn't sure about that now.

She stood in the middle of a street in a huge ville, a cancerous orange sun hanging overhead and peering fitfully through layers of indigo-and-charcoal clouds. Wags lined the streets, some of them resting against one another where they'd wrecked.

White-gray ash overlay everything like a blanket of snow. It was inches thick in places, piled deep on the wags, against the tall buildings, strewed across the bloated corpses. Tiny breezes carried whirling ash dervishes yards away. Nothing lived.

Krysty tried to stop her movement, struggled to stop walking through the deathscape rendered in ash and pain around her. But she couldn't; in the twisted nightmare, Phlorin controlled her body. Instead, Krysty turned her efforts to waking. She reached out for Ryan, feeling the emptiness that was there. Only the old woman living in the back of her brain didn't allow her to maintain that sensation.

This is your legacy, Phlorin said.

Not mine, Krysty argued.

You can't walk away from this. The Chosen are here to know.

To know what? Krysty scanned the death and destruction that lay in all directions around her. Despite all her experience with sudden death, with all the forms it could manifest itself in, these sights left her cold. There had been, she knew, life there in those streets only hours ago.

Now it was all gone.

She strode by a young man lying in the street, brickwork smashed around him from the nearby building. The swirling ash partially covered his face, but it hadn't completely filled in his open mouth or the gaping eye socket. His limbs were twisted mockeries of anything human, the flesh burned from them in places from a searing heat.

To know what was here before, Phlorin answered her question.

What was where?

Here. In Deathlands before it became called Deathlands.

If you can remember all of this, why can't you remember anything further back?

I can. I have the memories of my sisters to rely on.

The sensation of movement left Krysty dizzy. The scene before her blurred and changed. In moments, she seemed to be standing on the same street—or one like it—before the nukecaust had erupted and changed it forever.

The street was alive with movement and throbbed with an incessant noise like Krysty had never heard before. Wags raced along the street in both directions, clustered more tightly than an anthill, and people flowed along the sidewalks in dresses and clothing Krysty had seldom seen.

What is this place? Krysty asked.

A ville called Seattle. In its day, it was one of the largest villes in the predark times. It was drank down during the quakes that took the western coast.

How do you know about it? Krysty had seen fragments of vids concerning the ville. She'd even read about it in movie books that had survived the nukecaust and the intervening century. But never in all the vids and the images the books stirred up in her imagination had the ville ever seemed like this. She felt claustrophobic, lost amid the crush of people and wags, the noise and the smoke that burned the back of her throat.

One of the Chosen, an ancestor of mine, lived here at the time.

Krysty reached out for one of the people walking past her, wrapping her hand around the wrist of a man in a sharply fitted dark blue suit. She was surprised to realize she'd touched flesh over hard bone.

The man turned and gazed at her, cocking his head to one side. "Can I help you, miss?"

"No," Krysty told him. "No, thank you. I'm quite all right."

The man appeared uncertain for a moment, then moved on, rejoining the thronging flock that trudged along the sidewalk. She watched him go with mixed emotions.

How can you remember this? she asked.

Our memories go back generations. Our biggest concerns aren't how we remember, but how is it you don't.

No one can remember like this, Krysty protested.

We do.

How?

Someone has to keep records. Someone must learn the truth.

The truth of what?

Of how all this came to be, Phlorin said.

It happened because of the nukes, Krysty replied. Governments stocked them before skydark. More than enough to kill the world a hundred times over.

But who set off the nukes?

Krysty walked down the sidewalk, her eyes drawn to the shop windows filled with dresses, electronics, books and other merchandise. All of them seemed to glitter and appear ethereal.

If you talk to different people, you get different answers about that. And most people don't care at all anymore. It doesn't matter.

Not to place blame, but to simply know. That's what we need to hand down.

Krysty remembered some of the stories the companions had heard from the Heimdall Foundation men, Bernsen and Hoyle, while going back to Colorado to get Dean. Even after the nukecaust, the Foundation had dedicated itself to finding out what had truly happened to the world. What good's the knowing?

The truth shall set you free, Phlorin stated.

I'm not free, Krysty pointed out. I've got a ghost wandering around in my head, forcing me to see things I'd rather not see, do things I'd rather not do.

All will be explained when we return to my people.

That's not going to happen.

Oh, it'll happen. It'll happen, or I'll get strong enough eventually to stop your heart. Then we'll watch your man as you die.

You'll die, too.

If I don't get back to my people, Phlorin said, I'm dead anyway.

Silently Krysty hoped that Donovan's knowledge would be enough to free her from her predicament.

Donovan is only a man, Phlorin said in disgust, and men know precious little as it is. Even before they start deluding themselves about their own grandeur.

But Krysty heard the small tremor of uncertainty in the old woman's voice. It wasn't much, but it was enough to give her hope.

Evidently Phlorin sensed the emotion because the world changed around Krysty again, warping into a narrow corridor that led through a large house that reminded her of the Cornelius family's home in Louisiana. Dim light trickled into the corridor, and she thought she heard sibilant voices in the distance. A cold chill prickled her skin, running across her shoulders and making her spine feel brittle.

You don't like it here, do you? Phlorin taunted. And her voice seemed changed, as well, fitting into the creaking old manse as if it belonged.

No. Krysty froze in place, trying to ignore the slither of wet flesh cascading through the corridor behind her. It wasn't real, she told herself. None of it was real. But at one point, it had been all too real and she knew it.

You remember this place, don't you? You almost lost your man here.

Something lapped out, smacking against the wooden floor. Although she didn't want to, Krysty ran. It was survival. She didn't have a weapon in hand, and from the sound of the thing's progress, it was huge.

Thin gray light peeped out from a set of double doors ahead of her. She aimed for them. She couldn't remember if the doors or the room beyond them actually existed in the Cornelius house, but it fit with her memory of it now easily.

There's no hope. No hope at all. I'll be in your dreams, and I'll rob you of sleep. You will give in to me. It's only a matter of time.

Krysty burst through the double doors, a prayer to Gaia on her lips. The doors slammed back against the walls, revealing the dark room ahead of her. The back wall was taken up by the silver screen the companions had watched vids on. Before it were rows of folding chairs all orderly and neat.

The Cornelius family sat in the chairs, their heads swiveling to focus on Krysty as she skidded to a stop in the center of the room. All of them were there: Elric, Thomas, Mary, Norman and Melmoth—pale haired and fiery eyed, like Jak but much, much worse.

"Welcome," Elric said, rising to his six foot three inch stature. Wasp thin, he looked even paler in death.

And Krysty had no doubts they were dead. The companions had killed them all, ending the Cornelius family line. At least, as far as they knew.

"We wait to greet you properly," Elric said in those cultured, dulcet tones he'd had. But the words sounded hoarse—papery and thin, like words squeezed through the cracked timber of a coffin.

Krysty backed away, listening to the wet smack of heavy flesh hitting the wooden floor out in the corridor. The sound echoed inside the viewing room, but Elric kept approaching, acting as if he didn't hear it.

Krysty backed away from him. It was only a dream, she told herself. Not real. Not real at all. But she also knew she couldn't take that chance. With Phlorin inside her head, it could be so much more. She turned and looked back toward the double doors that had let into the vid room.

A huge crocodile lounged in the doorway, something she'd never seen in the Cornelius home. It was easily twenty feet long, its mouth a row of gaping white fangs. The beady black eyes carried a cold, reptilian intelligence. Krysty wouldn't have been surprised if it had spoken.

The other members of the Cornelius family spread out, coming for Krysty. They moved slowly, rocking back and forth like windblown saplings. They turned Krysty back, drawing closer. They reached for her, their fingers distending into vicious claws.

"You mustn't leave yet," Elric said in that hauntingly smooth voice. "We've not yet had the pleasure of having you for dinner." He opened his mouth, exposing the long canines.