Baptism of Rage (15 page)

“I stepped in that pool an old man,” Alec said. “Older than you are now. I waited and I felt the waters washing over me, saw them washing over my sister. For days we did that, bathing there in these springs that smelled of fire and shit knows what else. But I could feel it, both of us could, even after that very first dip. A tingling. It was changing something, deep inside of us. Changing it, making it back the way it was. Making us alive again.”

“Lazarus,” Doc said, the word bursting from his lips no louder than a breath.

“What’s that?” Alec inquired, eyeing the old man suspiciously.

“Lazarus, the reborn man,” Doc explained. “His story is in the New Testament.” At Alec’s furrowed brow, Doc elaborated. “An old, old book, older than you or I. After his death, Lazarus is reborn. He needed only faith to do this. Only belief.”

Alec looked stunned and, unable to mask his interest, a question tumbled from his mouth in a rush of words. “Died? You said this Lazarus guy died? And he came back? To life?”

“To life,” Doc agreed wistfully. “But it’s just a story, Alec. A legend. Whatever basis there is for it is lost to the passing of time. Though I wonder if, mayhap, this spring at Babyville is a similar proposition. All legends must begin somewhere, mustn’t they?” he mused.

Alec was shaking his head in disbelief. “Bringing dead folks back to life,” he muttered. “That sure as hell is some serious shit you read.”

“Well,” Doc said with a grin, “it does not compare, really, with the things you are telling me.”

Alec’s eyes rolled off to the left as he thought, as though he was trying to find his place in a script, before he picked up his train of thought once again. “At first,” he told Doc, quietly, “I thought mebbe it was hurting. That tingling sensation, it stung, you know? Like the way rain can sting sometimes and you just have to keep out of its way until it’s gone.”

Doc nodded in response. The rains could be poisonous in the Deathlands.

“But even then,” Alec continued, “I kind of knew. There was something going on, just under the skin. This feeling I’d not felt in a long, long time. A good burn, like when your skin tans too fast in the sun. And my breath was coming easier and I was, I don’t know, more alive. I was still an old guy then, all wrinkles and aches, like you are.”

Doc snorted, amused.

“Took, I don’t know, three days,” Alec said. “Then we started to really see the effects of this magic pond. The effects it was having on me and Daisy and the others that had come with us.” Alec stopped, and his pale blue eyes locked with Doc’s. “We were all getting younger, Doc. Really younger, the years just melting off. We felt like kids again. When we left Baby we were different people.”

“Why did you leave?” Doc inquired.

“Ha!” Alec laughed. “No good getting a second chance at life if you don’t go and live it, is there? First thing I did, first ville we got to, I got myself two gaudies and I screwed their brains out. I felt so damn alive.”

Doc laughed once more, amused. “Then why are you going back now, Alec?” Doc asked.

Alec smiled. “I realized that I don’t want it to fade, man,” he said. “I want to go back and live there. Keep right where I am, nineteen years old, I guess. I don’t want it to go away. I want it to stay just the way it is.”

Leaning on his ebony cane, Doc nodded, appreciating the young man’s honesty.

“We had to tell others,” Alec continued after a moment. “We had to let others know about this, me and Daisy. Had to share the wonder we had found.”

Doc turned suddenly, looking at the man with a penetrating gaze. “Did you find it?” he inquired. “Were you the first?”

“No,” Alec said, “but I wish I was. The people that have it, they built a wall around it so no one could get in without paying their toll. In return they keep it clean, keep it pure, I guess. And they give you places to stay, lodgings while you’re there. They were building them when we left.”

Doc drew his eyes away from Alec, conflicting thoughts churning in his mind. Outside, the wind was picking up, howling across the fields with a low, spectral note. The front door shook in its frame, but it held solid. J.B. had nailed five heavy boards across it, and Doc knew the door wouldn’t move until they had been removed from inside. Sounds were coming from up the darkened stairs, the noises of voices and of doors being opened where the others checked the house. In the vast lounge, Mildred was sitting on the floor beside the fireplace, playing a hand of cards with Paul and Mary by the light from the flames.

Having turned a full circle, Doc’s eyes fell once more on the ash-blond young man. “Is it really worth it?” he asked. “Youth, I mean.”

Alec smiled. “It’s like a drug. You just keep going faster and faster. You never stop.”

Doc looked at the man thoughtfully as he continued.

“My eyes are better,” Alec said. “I’m stronger, I can do so much more. This world’s a latrine of crap, and only the fittest survive. Me and Daisy, we’re the fittest, Doc. We’re the fittest by a long way. Ain’t nothing going to take that from me now.”

Alec turned and made his way back to his sleeping arrangement on the floor of the main room, a little way from the sparking fire. Alone in the hallway, Doc glanced down and a smile appeared on his face, as though seeing his walking cane for the first time. From behind him, Doc felt the icy draft coming through the slightest gap in the wood of the heavy front door, its touch like the skeletal fingers of the grave, clawing for him, reaching for one of their own.

“Oh, Emily,” Doc muttered, “why did Chronos choose
me?
”

T
HE SECOND DOOR THAT
Ryan tried turned out to be an upstairs bathroom, with a scarred bathtub and a toilet that had been nailed shut. There was evidence that a basin had once been here, too, plumbed into the wall, but all that remained now were the rusting water pipes, their outlets stuffed with rags. The room stank of human detritus, and Ryan coughed, as the stench assaulted his nostrils and the back of his throat. Beside him, Krysty held a hand over her mouth and nose and took shallow breaths, feeling her eyes sting with tears.

The candle sparking in his hand, Ryan stepped back into the corridor and nodded to Croxton where the griz
zled, old farmer waited at the top of the stairs. “Tell Daisy we’ve found the latrine,” he said, indicating the room with the muzzle of his pistol.

A moment later, Daisy appeared on the landing, pushing past Croxton, her eyes flickering with the flame of the taper. “Can I get some privacy?” she asked Ryan as she strode past him and Krysty and into the bathroom.

“I can stay with her,” Krysty assured Ryan, but Daisy was already in the bathroom, shoving the door closed behind her.

And then Daisy shrieked. Krysty tapped at the door and pushed it open. Daisy stood in near-total darkness, glaring at the toilet.

“It stinks of shit in here and the fuckin’ stool don’t open,” Daisy yelped. “How’m I s’posed to…?”

“Use the tub,” Ryan instructed, standing in the doorway behind Krysty. Then he pulled Krysty out of the room. “Let’s keep checking,” he said, leading the way past the stairs toward the other end of the corridor. “Croxton, stay with Daisy, shout out loud if there’s any sign of trouble. Okay?”

Scratching at his beard, Croxton stepped onto the landing, nodding at Ryan as he passed him. “Loud and proud, don’t you worry,” he assured the one-eyed man.

C
ONFIDENT THAT THE
downstairs was secure, J.B. and Jak made their way back to the main corridor that led to the front door. In the flickering flame of his lighter, J.B. looked at the door that was set into the structure of the staircase, feeling certain that it had to lead to the basement.

Standing at J.B.’s elbow, Jak peered not at the door but toward the far end of the corridor. Intrigued, J.B. lifted the lighter in that direction and tried to penetrate the darkness with his gaze. There was a figure there, a tall man, standing beside the front door. J.B. automatically reached into his coat for his mini-Uzi, but he came up short when Jak breathed a single word. “Doc.”

Cursing his tired eyes, J.B. followed as Jak strode forward, meeting with the older man standing alone in the darkness. It was Doc all right, but the man seemed to be oblivious to them.

“Doc?” J.B. began. “You okay?”

Doc seemed to take a moment to react. Then, he looked up and acknowledged his companions, the light of the flame playing across his fine white teeth. “I am well, John Barrymore,” Doc said. “Just a little lost in my own thoughts.”

“I hear you.” J.B. nodded. The encounter with the scalies and the subsequent retreat to this old, ramshackle house had left them all a little spooked, himself included. “You should get yourself in there with the fire, warm up.”

Agreeing, Doc made his way back to the main room where the majority of the travelers were now either sleeping or trying to.

J.B. turned, dismissing the old man from his mind as he made his way back to the door under the stairs. Jak followed.

“Doc okay?” Jak asked, his words abrupt and to the point as ever.

J.B. couldn’t answer. “Let’s just make sure we are,” he said, pushing at the basement door.

D
AISY SQUATTED OVER THE
bath, relieving herself in the darkness. She could hear noises all about, the rustling and chirruping of insects hidden behind the wallboards and inside the pipes, the low thrumming of birds as they nested in the rafters of the house above her and in the broken rooms beside the bathroom. The bath itself stank, the combined smell of oil and vomit and feces and piss. Something dripped, the plip-plop sounds coming erratically, distracting Daisy as she forced herself to urinate into the tub. Beneath her feet she could feel a horrible slush, like standing in the stewed goat that she had eaten at the Traid n Post.

Once she was done, Daisy hitched up her pants and spit into the gunk in the bath, trying to get rid of the foul taste in her mouth that the almighty stench had brought in its wake. She pulled the door open and popped her head outside, spying Croxton standing there.

He tilted his head toward the far end of the corridor. “Our new friends are busy,” he whispered. Then he pushed the door wider and stepped into the decaying bathroom with Daisy, pushing the door closed behind him and leaning with his back against it in near-total darkness.

Daisy retched, the awful stench irritating her throat. “They blowed up our wag,” she said, an annoyed edge to her words.

Jeremiah harrumphed. “There will be other wags, Daisy,” he said, his voice low. “Barry’s got one, a nice-looking rig.”

“Yeah, I seen it,” Daisy drawled, but she didn’t sound happy.

“Something will come along,” Croxton assured her. “Just you wait.”

“And these sec men.” Daisy sounded incredulous. “You see them use their blasters? I don’t like these people. They’re scary trouble.”

Standing in the darkness, the old farmer stroked Daisy’s hair gently, pulling her close to him. She was shaking with the cold, and welcomed his comforting arms. “They’re well-armed, but they won’t be a problem,” he whispered, his mouth close to the crown of her head. “Besides, they’re what we need right now, if we’re to get back to the ville.”

Croxton felt the girl nod beneath him.

T
HE BASEMENT DOOR
swung inwards at J.B.’s push, requiring no force at all to open. “Unlocked,” he muttered, warily stepping forward. He ran the flame of his light right and left before him, trying to make out details. All he could see was the low ceiling and a flight of rotting, wooden stairs that ran down to the cellar of the old house. “Come on, Jak,” he said, placing one foot on the first step, “and stay sharp.”

Jak followed in a semicrouch as J.B. led the way down the decaying staircase, the wooden treads groaning at their weight. Jak held the Magnum Colt Python in one hand, a leaf-bladed knife in the other. His nose wrinkled, twitching as he scented the air. Jak could smell things down here. Dead things.

The last three stairs were missing, just broken splinters on the risers marking what had once been there. J.B. jumped ahead, ignoring the break in the stairs and landing solidly, his boots echoing on the stone floor beneath. He looked down and saw that the floor was part slabs of stone and part earth, and he was conscious that things
were moving at the periphery of his vision, scampering to get out of the illumination that his cigarette lighter cast. Just bugs, he thought.

There had been a moment, back with the convoy, when he had become aware of the scalies surrounding them in the darkness, just like bugs. They had been there, creeping through the shadows, almost—but not quite—noiseless, assessing their prey. J.B. had wondered why he couldn’t see them. He thought about this on his way to the farmhouse, sitting in the back of the canvas-covered wag, removing his spectacles and wiping them on his shirt. Before replacing them, he had run his free hand over the bridge of his nose, feeling suddenly old and tired.

Maybe this quest to Baby, to the Fountain of Youth or whatever the hell it was, maybe J.B. needed it more than he was ready to admit.

“J.B.?” Jak asked, his voice a penetrating whisper in the basement.

J.B. turned and saw the chalk-skinned young man crouching on the last remaining stair, staring at him. J.B. nodded, turning back to the task at hand, pushing the thoughts of his own mortality away.

Together, they made their way into the basement area, poised for attack.

W
HILE
D
AISY TOOK CARE
of her business, Ryan and Krysty checked the remaining rooms off the landing. There was a master bedroom with a grand four-poster in its center. The bed was old but serviceable, its coverings moth-eaten and stained. Krysty smiled as Ryan
examined the bed, checking around and beneath it, even clambering up to check that nothing was hidden above the canopy.

“Mebbe we’ll get a little sleep after all, lover,” she said in a playful tone.

“Mebbe,” Ryan grunted, preoccupied. After he had checked under the bed, he looked inside the cavernous wardrobe that lined one wall, but all he found were old clothes, rat droppings and the white splotches of bird feces.