Dark Carnival

  Dark Carnival

  The Deathlands series

  Book XIV

  James Axler

  First edition January 1992

  ISBN 0-373-62514-6

  Copyright © 1992 by Worldwide Library

  Philippine copyright 1992

  Australian copyright 1992.

  Content

  Excerpt

  Dedication

  The Abyss Within The Skull

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Excerpt

  The mutie gator clamped its teeth around Ryan's ankles and jerked him into the river

  The creature had incredible power, flailing him around like a toy in the hands of an excited child. The one-eyed man struggled to hold his breath, but it was impossible.

  Twice he managed to get fingers on the butt of his SIG-Sauer blaster, but each time the gator twisted him around, dashing him facedown into the shingle, making him lose his grip. Ryan's third attempt was for his panga, and this time he was lucky.

  But the cleaver, with its broad, heavy blade, was suited for slashing and hacking, rather than thrusting. Though Ryan tried to use it, the edge simply slid off the great knobbed scales of the giant reptile..

  Battling against a shrinking supply of air, Ryan could feel his strength beginning to slip away.

  And he was, slowly and surely, being dragged toward the deeper waters offshore…

  Dedication

  After twenty-five years of magic and mystery, wonder and love, this one is for Elizabeth.

  The Abyss

  Within The Skull

  It is a profound mistake to underestimate the lure and attraction of a great evil. The highway of history is lined with the whitened bones of those who have fallen into that error.

  —Thomas Wun

  Chapter One

  "IT'S TIME TO go, son," Ryan Cawdor said, holding out a hand.

  For several heartbeats the boy didn't move, only stood and stared at the one-eyed man.

  "You're Dean?" Ryan asked.

  "And your name's Ryan Cawdor?"

  The child's voice was calm, his breath billowing in the cold, damp air. The noise of death and fighting was all around them.

  Ryan knew that his friends, J. B. Dix, Doc Tanner, Krysty Wroth and Mildred Wyeth, would have reached the shingle beach of the Hudson River by now, near the ravaged ville of Newyork. They'd be waiting for him to join up with them so that they could escape in the recce wag.

  "Time's one thing we don't have, son," he said. "Time for talk later. Now we gotta go."

  "You my father?"

  "Yeah, that's what they tell me."

  "Truly?"

  "Yeah."

  Ryan had never been a man of limitless patience. Right now the boy was pushing things way beyond the limits.

  "Don't suppose you got my knife? Green handle?"

  "I got it." A short quarrel from a crossbow splintered against the stone wall just above Ryan's head, and he heard a guttural voice bellowing out commands. One of the scalies' leaders was trying to restore some order.

  "Dean," he growled. "Now."

  Finally the boy held out a hand, sticky with fresh-spilled blood, and grasped Ryan's fingers. Together father and son sprinted into the arched tunnel that wound its way toward the river.

  THE BROKEN FRAGMENTS of fading moonlight had disappeared by the time J.B. emerged past the corpses of the scalie guards. A frail snow was falling, driven on a strong northeasterly wind. The shingle was dusted white, and the waves off the river tumbled and hissed on the gently sloping stretch of beach.

  "Wag still there?" Mildred asked, panting.

  "Can't see. You make it, Krysty?"

  She held a hand above her eyes, trying to look a little to the side of where she thought their vehicle might be. It was a trick that Ryan had taught her, and it generally worked. But the sleeting flakes of snow pattered in her face, making it impossible to see anything.

  "No. We wait here for Ryan?"

  "Perhaps if we were to remove ourselves to the beginning of that broken pier, we might be better able to provide him with any covering fire he might require."

  "Good thinking, Doc," J.B. said. "All of us trying to scramble up there in dark and ice, and something'd go wrong."

  "I'll wait here," Krysty stated calmly. "Just reloaded my blaster. The rest of you go out there and keep watch for us."

  They'd been together long enough to know better than to waste time arguing with the flame-haired woman when she used that tone of voice. With J.B. in the lead, they vanished into the Stygian blackness.

  Krysty held the silvered P-7A13 Heckler & Koch in her frozen right hand, feeling all the better for the thirteen fresh rounds of 9 mm ammo in the mag.

  She knew that the others would be reloading their own weapons, preparing for the charging pursuit that would inevitably come from the enraged scalies. Krysty had enough confidence in Ryan to believe that he'd come out of the tunnel ahead of any chasing muties.

  She flattened herself against the wall of rock, pistol in hand, waiting. Something was nagging at her "seeing" sense, but too much of her mind was devoted to the immediate present. Still, a small part of her brain was whispering "Danger."

  Amplified by the acoustically perfect shape of the tunnel, the dreadful sounds of dying were clearly audible. Screams, made high and thin, squeezed past the half-closed sec doors. Twice there was the noise of a gunshot, followed by what sounded like one of the scalies roaring orders.

  Krysty put her head to one side, straining to hear what was going on, imagining that she could hear the clattering of Ryan's steel-tipped combat boots striking sparks off the stones of the wide corridor.

  "Gaia, help him," she whispered, her breath frosting the air in front of her face.

  RYAN REALIZED how vulnerable they'd all be if a concerted attack from the scalies should hit them out in the open, on the crumbling, slippery jetty. Against his better judgment he stopped halfway to the steel doors, reaching for the spare caseless rounds for his assault rifle. He gestured for the boy to stand still and wait for him while he reloaded.

  Dean hesitated, looking back toward the swelling babble of noise and raw menace, then ahead into the unknowable darkness.

  "There's friends outside," Ryan told him as he bent over the blaster. "Best you go ahead and join them."

  "No. Want to stay here." There was a long pause before he added, "With you. Here."

  "
When we're out of this, we'll talk about doing like you're told. Can't argue now."

  Even as he readied the G-12 for action, a part of Ryan's mind strayed to the ten-year-old boy at his side—the son that he'd never been aware existed, had only known about for a couple of days, had only met ninety seconds ago.

  "You chilled all those scalies. Rona said you were the meanest son of a bitch killer she ever saw in her life."

  Ryan could hear feet advancing toward them from the main area of the scalies' base, shuffling along as though the muties were trying to move quietly.

  "Dean, keep your mouth tight shut," he hissed, "and do exactly what I say."

  "Sure." In the gloom Ryan caught a flicker of light from the deep-set eyes and a nod of the curly head.

  "Pass that door. Go on. I'm with you." Both of them backed away, around the gentle curve of the passage, reaching the sec-steel exit and edging through it. Ryan considered the possibility of trying to lock it or wedge it against their pursuers.

  A brace of feathered arrows thunked against the other side of the door as he hesitated, making his mind up.

  He took the boy's skinny arm and heaved him across the open space, passing the bodies of the butchered sentries, out into the freezing air.

  KRYSTY HAD HER FINGER on the trigger. The noise of the water breaking on the beach was louder, making it hard to hear whether anyone was coming out. And the darkness had become almost total.

  She sensed movement behind her, between the tumbled rocks of the old wharf and the Hudson. She whirled, her right wrist braced in her left hand in the approved shootist's stance.

  Whatever had caught her eye was gone. Or had never been there in the first place. Or had been a length of sodden driftwood, floating sullen and partly submerged in the shallows.

  As she turned back, a figure emerged from the mouth of the tunnel.

  Two figures.

  "Ryan?"

  "Yeah. Got the… Dean."

  "The boy?"

  "Sure."

  "Scalies coming?"

  "Reached the sec door. Where's the others? Everyone make it?"

  "Yeah. Out toward the wag. Cover if we need it."

  The snow was beginning to come down with a real vengeance, masking everything, dropping visibility to a couple of yards.

  Ryan looked around and drew a deep, shuddering breath, realizing how much the past forty minutes or so had taken out of him—the tension of entering the strange, dreamlike headquarters of the scalies, picking his way between the sleeping muties and the chained prisoners, and the startling appearance of his lost son and the brief, bloody brawl.

  There were a million questions that brimmed in Ryan's brain, questions about Sharona Carson, Dean's mother, about the whole ten years of the boy's life. And smaller questions, like how come the boy hadn't been chained? If he had been, then Ryan would already be cooling meat inside the cloistered caverns.

  "Let's go," he said.

  "Where?" The boy was staring out into the blackness, blurred by the whirling blizzard. "You got a boat out there?"

  "Yeah. Come on."

  Krysty led the way toward the jetty, picking cautious steps across the slippery, icy pebbles. Dean followed her, with Ryan bringing up the rear.

  The woman skirted a drifting log, stumbled and nearly fell. Dean also stepped around the length of dark wood.

  Ryan was passing the sodden hunk of driftwood when it opened its gaping jaws and made a hissing lunge.

  Chapter Two

  ON DRY, FIRM earth, Ryan's razor-honed reflexes would have carried him clear of the attacking mutie alligator. But the beach sloped, and the tiny stones shifted and slithered under his combat boots. As he started to fall, he threw the Heckler & Koch G-12 toward Krysty.

  Then the gigantic saurian, well over twenty feet long, clamped its overlapping teeth around his ankles and jerked him off balance.

  Fairly early in their relationship, Jak Lauren had told Ryan all about gators. The albino teenager had been born and raised in the festering bayous of Louisiana, spending much of his time hiding out or hunting among the gnarled roots of the mangroves, the demesne of the big crocodiles and alligators.

  "They'll grab hold then roll you, try drag you underwater. Once got you in swamp, roll again and keep you under. Take and store you in tunnel. Like larder. Fight quick or finished."

  There was a part of Ryan's brain that recalled that distant conversation, even while he was flailing in the freezing shingle, hands scrabbling for a grip among the whispering stones.

  The huge gator was doing just as Jak Lauren had said it would.

  Rolling.

  If Ryan hadn't gone with it, the weight and pressure would have dislocated his knee and hip.

  He heard Krysty scream his name and also a higher, younger voice. Then his head splashed into the shallows, and he was deafened by the crashing of the water.

  Pressure pressed below both knees, but Ryan managed to kick one leg free. The alligator had incredible power, flailing him around like a toy in the hands of a maniac child. The one-eyed man struggled to hold his breath, but it was impossible. Some of the time his head was in the cold, snowy air. Much of the time it was beneath the freezing, bubbling river.

  He could hear a raging, snarling sound filling his head, but he wasn't aware that it was his own voice making the noise.

  Twice he managed to get his fingers on the butt of the SIG-Sauer blaster on his hip, but each time the gator twisted him around, dashing him facedown into the shingle, making him lose his grip again. Ryan's third attempt was for his panga, and this time he was lucky.

  The hilt was in his fingers and he clung to it, literally, for the dearness of living.

  But the cleaver, with its broad, heavy blade, was suited for slashing and hacking rather than thrusting. Though Ryan tried to use it, the edge simply slid off the great knobbed scales of the reptile.

  Battling against a shrinking supply of air, Ryan could feel his strength beginning to slip away.

  And he was, slowly and surely, being dragged toward the deeper waters offshore.

  AS SOON AS the gigantic creature erupted from the dark pebbles, Krysty had turned and drawn her pistol. She saw the futility of it and scrabbled for the Heckler & Koch rifle that Ryan had thrown away as he fell. But even with that in her hands, she realized she could do nothing with it. All she could see was a blurred, tangled shape, flailing and splashing in the bubbling whiteness at the edge of the water.

  Dean was at her side, staring intently at the fight.

  "It'll drag him under and drown him," he shouted to her.

  "I know."

  The boy at her side pulled a tiny knife from his belt, with a blade no longer than a man's forefinger.

  "I'll do it," he said. "Save Ryan."

  "No, you'll only—" But the child evaded her grab, ducking under her hand. He ran the few paces to the edge of the Hudson and jumped in.

  "Oh, Gaia…!"

  Simultaneously the gator gave a great swirling thrust with its tail and stubby hind legs, and dragged Ryan completely below the surface. There were a few bubbles, and then the dark, oily water became sullen and still.

  AS THE RIVER CLOSED over his head, Ryan managed a last, frantic, sucking breath, filling his lungs as he was drawn inexorably under. Holding the hilt of the panga in both his hands, he tried repeatedly to stab downward, toward the long, clutching snout that held him fast. But he was blinded, tossed and turned, unable to work out just where the gator's eyes were. The blade jarred as it struck bone and armored hide, but there was no hint of the creature being harmed.

  A cold blackness began to crawl across the inside of Ryan's skull.

  Another of the creatures began to attack him. Ryan tried to jab the cleaver at it, feeling its claws tangling in his hair, but he was too weakened. There was the illusion that the clamping jaws had released his leg and that he was being heaved upward toward the air.

  Then his head broke the surface of the water, and a great surge of air whooshed
into his strained lungs. But his hair was still locked by something that was pulling at him.

  "Swim, Ryan!" commanded a small, thin voice.

  "What?" he croaked,

  " Swim! Before any others smell blood and come in after us."

  "Yeah," he replied, beginning to kick feebly, hoping that Dean was leading them in the right direction. In the midnight blackness he had totally lost touch with where the shore was.

  The boy still grabbed him by the shoulder, his skinny legs pumping at the water, driving them toward the band of deeper blackness behind them. Ryan suddenly felt his feet kick something, and for a moment he came close to losing control and screaming. Then he realized that it was a chunk of long-buried rabble and that he was now in less than four feet of water, able to stand and stagger out onto a sloping beach of sliding pebbles.

  "Fireblast!" he panted. "Thanks for that, son. What'd you do?"

  "Stabbed it in the eye. Lost that knife. Stuck in the socket. You still got my own knife?"

  Ryan wiped the saltwater from his eye. "Sure. Give it you once we're safe in the wag. Which way do we go? That way?" He pointed north, guessing that the struggle would have carried them down the stream rather than against the flow.

  "Yeah. Not far. You walk all right?"

  "Sure." He turned and glanced back at the river, peering through the drifting snow. Something exploded into the air fifty yards out, a long, sinuous shape, twisting as it leaped clear out of the water. He heard a long, hissing exhalation of breath, rage and blinded agony.

  As quickly as it had appeared, the wounded alligator splashed into the dark water and vanished.

  THOUGH ETERNITIES SEEMED to have crawled by when he was under the surface of the Hudson, Ryan was surprised to find that they'd gone less than a hundred yards south, not even far enough to be beyond the second of the long jetties.

  In between the snow flurries he could now see the yawning mouth of the tunnel that led into the scalies' headquarters. And, at the edge of the river, stood the figure of Krysty Wroth.

  "Hey!" he shouted, but the wind carried his voice away.

  The woman's mutie instinct reacted to his approach, and she turned to face him, seeing the slight figure of the boy at his side.