James Axler (2 page)

“Open your eyes, Krysty, can you do that for me?”

Doc asked the flame-haired woman.

Slowly, as though it caused her pain, Krysty widened her eyes from the slits that they had unconsciously become. Doc leaned in closer to look, and Mildred followed once he had stepped aside. The whites of Krysty’s eyes had turned dark pink, bloodshot, as though irritated by smoke. Krysty blinked, her eyelids fluttering like a weathervane in high winds. Mildred told her that it was okay, she could stop now.

“Am I dying?” Krysty mumbled through dry lips.

“No,” Ryan replied firmly, automatically, his single eye holding her gaze.

There was a long moment of silence until Mildred finally spoke. “It could be an infection. Food poisoning. Rad sickness—” she ticked them off on her fingers“—muscle aches, cramps, weariness. It could just be influenza. Right now I can’t tell you. She needs a proper examination, which means you need to stop while I do that. It wouldn’t take long, Ryan.”

Ryan looked around, across the flat expanse of sand that surrounded them. “We can’t stop here, Mildred,” he told her. “This is a hopeless position if we need to defend it. There are probably burrowers here, and there’s also—”

“Stop it, Ryan,” Doc muttered. “Krysty’s one of us, she needs…”

But Mildred butted in. “He’s right, Doc. None of us will be any use to her if we’re chilled,” she stated. “Let’s get to a campsite, a cave, a ville. I’ll examine her when there’s time.

“She’ll be fine,” Mildred added, turning to their companion. “Won’t you, girl?”

Krysty nodded heavily, the hair falling over her face.

J.B. called back to them, keeping his voice low.

“Jak’s here,” he said.

They all looked in the direction J.B. pointed and saw the little trail of sand kicking up in the wind as Jak approached.

The albino stopped in front of J.B., his breath ragged for a moment until he got it under control. Ryan and the others joined them, as Jak began to enthusiastically tell of his findings, gesturing repeatedly toward the northeast.

“Tall. Big tall,” Jak began, the words stringing together into his own version of speech. “Towers into sky, like old Libberlady.”

“What is it?” Ryan asked. “What did you see?”

“A tower, like skeleton, the air. Near it a ville.”

Mildred sucked in her breath suddenly, so loud that the other companions turned to look at her. “A ville, Ryan,” she said. “It is just what we need. I can examine Krysty there, it’s ideal.” No one spoke, and Mildred saw the doubt on Ryan’s features. “We can all bed down there, maybe get more supplies,” she added, a gambler trying to sweeten the pot.

 “Could be trouble, Ryan,” J.B. stated flatly.

Ryan looked in the direction that Jak had been pointing, weighing the options in his mind. Doc wondered if he should say something, like some old-time counsel for the defense, pleading with Ryan for the lenience of the court. Krysty needed to stop; in fact, all of them would benefit from it. But the Armorer was right, too—sometimes a new ville was nothing but chilling waiting to happen, and most villes didn’t take kindly to outlanders, especially a bunch of well-armed nomads with nothing much to offer.

Ryan started to march to the northeast, the direction that Jak had come from. “Let’s go look at this tower,” he stated.

The others followed, with Doc and Mildred taking a position on either side of the sick Krysty.

IT TOOK FORTY MINUTES to reach Jak’s tower with Ryan setting a brisk pace. As they got closer, they could see it resting on the horizon, its thin struts seeming to waver in the heat haze.

When they were fifty paces away, Doc stated his opinion. “It is just a pylon,” he asserted.

J.B. didn’t bother to turn back as he addressed the older man. “Then where are the lines?”

Shifting his grip around Krysty’s back, Doc leaned his cane against his leg and held his free hand up to shield his eyes, staring at the towering structure. J.B. was right—there were no power lines, not even the trace of where they might have once attached.

Mildred’s voice, urgent and quiet, broke into his thoughts. “Doc.”

The old man turned to look at her across their suffering colleague. “What is—?” He stopped as the shiny red droplet twinkled in the sunlight, catching his eye.

Krysty’s nose was bleeding, a trickle of blood running from her left nostril, working its way to her deathly pale lips.

Doc started to call for Ryan and the others, but Mildred suddenly stumbled and Krysty lurched out of their grip, falling to the ground, making a muffled thump as her body compacted the sand.

Doc knelt, gently turning Krysty’s head, pulling up her face. She spluttered, choking on a mouthful of sand.

Mildred regained her balance and crouched beside them. “How is she?” she asked.

“She’s breathing. Are you okay?” he asked Mildred.

Mildred brushed sand from her fatigue pants, little heaps of it sailing from the covers on the bulbous pockets. “I’m fine, I’m good. She just suddenly… I don’t know, did you feel it?”

“She became deadweight,” Doc responded, and immediately wished he had used a less resonant term.

Pulling an otoscope from her bag of meager possessions, Mildred held it to Krysty’s eyes. Doc unfolded his kerchief, with its blue-swallow-eye pattern, and offered it to Krysty.

“I think I’m okay,” Krysty told them both after a moment. “Just went weak for a second. Can you hear that? The noise?”

Mildred looked around her, then back to her patient.

“There’s no noise, sweetie. Just the wind.”

Krysty looked confused, as though she would burst into tears at any second. “But it’s so loud.” She whimpered.

Doc looked at Krysty, a woman he had known for more adventures than any man should have in a single lifetime, and his heart broke. Krysty Wroth: capable and beautiful. No, not beautiful—stunning. The stunning, utterly capable woman he had trusted his life to on more occasions than he could count on the fingers of both hands, was sitting in front of him, confused and helpless. He never thought he would see her like this.

Slowly, being as gentle as they could, Doc and Mildred helped Krysty off the ground. They didn’t bother to brush her down, as there didn’t seem to be any point. They just needed to get her moving, before she stopped moving for good. Together, they half carried, half dragged her toward the tower where the others waited.

“BIG, ISN’T IT?” Ryan said to no one in particular as the six companions stood at the base of the tower.

“Yeah, sure is,” J.B. agreed, using the hem of his shirt to clean the lenses of his spectacles before perching them back on his nose. He took a step forward and stretched a hand toward the metal structure. He held it there, beside the tower, for a few seconds before announcing that there was no power emanating from it that he could feel. It was a quick test, hardly scientific, but it sufficed in the situation.

The tower rose forty feet into the sky. Built from struts of metal, like scaffolding, it looked somewhat like a power pylon, just as Doc had guessed. It was not a pylon, though. Up close, that was evident. There were no attachments, nothing feeding to it or from it. It was a free-standing, skeletal tower, roughly pyramidal in shape, albeit very thin. The base was only twelve feet square, and it closed to its tip very gradually.

A large metal canister, something like a prenukecaust oil drum, rested in the center of its base, half-buried in the sand.

The structure was utterly silent and displayed no moving parts, a surrealist statue on the plain.

Finally, Mildred spoke up, asking the question on everyone’s lips. “Well, what is it?”

“Nuked if I know,” Ryan replied.

The companions watched as Jak clambered up the side of the structure, his hands clutching at the metal struts.

“Our Jak’s quite the climber,” Doc said in admiration when the youth reached the peak in a handful of seconds.

Both J.B. and Ryan had already run their lapel rad counters over the structure, making sure that it wasn’t hot. Then they had tested the metal legs as best as they could, for electric current and magnetic attraction, as well as eyeballing for fractures or rust. It looked stable and had hardly been touched by the elements. The obvious conclusion was that it was newly built, but by whom and why, they couldn’t tell.

“You see anything?” Ryan called to Jak at the top of the tower.

“Same,” Jak yelled back. “All over same.”

Mildred sighed, looking at the tower as Jak spidered down. “Ryan, we really need to get to that ville.” She waited, looking at Ryan as he gazed at the structure.

“Ryan?”

He nodded before looking at her. “Just seems wrong, leaving this tower here. Has to be here for a purpose, Mildred,” he told her.

Mildred shrugged. “Maybe they tie their horses to it,” she suggested, looking over at the tiny ville they could all see about two hundred and fifty yards away.

 “Mebbe tie prisoners,” Jak chipped in.

Doc’s cheery voice cut through them, intentionally loud, like a wake-up call. “Perhaps we could just ask them,” he suggested. The group turned to look at him.

He was busy hefting Krysty to her feet once more, getting his arm beneath hers so that she could lean against him as she walked.

Krysty looked in no condition to walk. Dried blood married her face around her nose. The skin around her eyes was puffy and had darkened almost to black, and the whites of her eyes remained bloodshot red. Her flame-colored hair was a mass of tangles, twirling this way and that like the stems of a climbing plant. From the way that Doc carried her, it appeared that she had added weight somehow, her muscles no longer strong enough to support her.

Aware that he had everyone’s attention, Doc pronounced, “Miss Wroth and I are going to make our way to yonder ville and ask some questions in the hopes of enlightenment.” He struggled two steps with Krysty, and it was clear that he was taking all of her weight now.

J.B. had scrambled across to Krysty’s other side.

“Let me give you a hand, Doc,” he told the older man, but he left it open, as though it were a request.

In the end, Ryan and J.B. shared Krysty’s weight, relieving the older man as the group trekked down the incline to the ville. She had mercifully fallen into a slumber, and they carried her by shoulders and feet to make the journey easier. Mildred sidled up to Doc and gave him a wink. “You sly old coot.” She laughed.

Doc shrugged. If it had been left up to J.B., they would still be studying the mysterious tower a month from now with Ryan deluding himself about Krysty’s health. Krysty’s problems, Doc had reasoned, were somewhat more pressing just now.

Head held low to his shoulders, Jak ran ahead once more, kicking up little puffs of sand as he edged sideways down the incline toward the buildings.

THE VILLE WAS SUNKEN slightly, located in a natural dip in the surrounding plains. It was made up of almost two dozen ramshackle buildings, constructed from scrounged wood and metal. The majority of the buildings were single-story, with only four in the center going to two stories along with a circular barn at the far edge of town. A high wall surrounded the whole settlement, and the companions could hear dogs barking furiously as they got closer.

The sun was setting when they reached the ville’s high gates, turning the skies a burning red as it sauntered under the horizon in the west behind them. The sturdy gates were constructed of strips of rough wood tied together with old rope and held in place with rusty hinges. Twice as tall as a man, the gates were set within a similarly high wall constructed from a patchwork of materials. Opened together, the gates could let a wide wagon pass through into the ville, but they would be kept closed for most of the time to discourage possible looters.

Two sentries patrolled the top of the wall, and they came over to the edge of the gates when Ryan and his companions approached. “You want somethin’, outlanders?” the sentry to the left called out, casually brandishing a large-bore shotgun over the rim of the wall. He was a heavy man, wearing a tattered, checked shirt and two days’ worth of beard. Across from him, on the other side of the gates, a sallow young man dressed in similar clothing trained a wooden crossbow on the companions. Ryan judged that its range was in-sufficient to reach them as far from the gates as they were, and certainly not with any appreciable accuracy.

Ryan let Krysty’s feet drop gently to the ground and waved his companions back, instructing them to wait as he went to speak with the sentry.

“We’re not here looking for trouble,” he began, holding his hands at shoulder height to show he held no weapon. The longblaster was clearly visible on his back, of course, and he had a blaster at his hip, but this was the. The sentries would have been more suspicious of an apparently unarmed man than one who came at them blasters blazing.

The sentry on the left raised the muzzle of his weapon a little, encouraging Ryan to continue.

“My friend back there is ill,” Ryan said, his gaze never leaving the man’s eyes. “We come seeking somewhere to bed down, mebbe look her over.”

The sentry with the crossbow shook his head, looking over at his comrade. “We don’t got no healin’ to give to outlanders,” Shotgun stated bluntly, and his companion made a show of raising his crossbow higher, pointing it at Ryan’s forehead.

“You best be on your way, One-Eye.” The crossbow-wielding man chuckled.

Ryan didn’t flinch, he just continued to look at the man with the shotgun. He bore these two no malice.

They were just doing their job. Just protecting their own.

“We’ve got our own healer,” Ryan assured them.

The trace of a smile crossed his lips as he saw both the sentries look across to his companions, squinting against the setting sun as they tried to guess which of the ragtag group might have valuable medical skills.

“Be willing to let the healer take a look at your people, too,” Ryan suggested, “if you need that. Free of charge, if you can give us somewhere to examine our own.”

The sentries looked at each another, muttered a few words that Ryan didn’t catch. But he detected the change in atmosphere immediately, and leaped to one side as the buckshot exploded toward him with a loud crack.