Baptism of Rage Read online

  “Why, thank you,” Krysty said, taking the proffered can. She looked at the contents, sniffing at it warily. The can contained a powder that J.B. had added boiled water to, creating a brown sludge. With no label on the can and its scent an indefinable mixture of chemicals, the contents could have been some kind of gravy, but may just as likely have been chocolate sauce. Krysty dipped her finger in the gunk and tasted it, before smiling. “Tastes good,” she announced.

  Beside Krysty, Doc and Ryan were tucking into their own cans, neither of them saying very much.

  Twenty minutes later they were on the move.

  Chapter Eleven

  The five wags rolled over the shockscape, passing dead trees in their fields of dust, lumbering past forgotten spots on the map that had once been thriving communities before the nukes had fallen.

  The old farmer and leader of the refugees, Jeremiah Croxton, was riding shotgun as Ryan drove the converted harvester that he had acquired from Mitch and Annie.

  “I figure we’re about a day away from Baby,” Croxton said as they pulled away from the road sign that welcomed visitors to Tazewell. The scalies were nowhere to be seen, presumably they had gone back to whatever passed for a nest during the daytime. Ryan turned the wheels hard, guiding the peculiar wag off the road and over a flat expanse of field. Croxton looked at him. “Probably quicker by road, Ryan,” he said, smirking.

  Ryan shook his head. “Krysty told me all about those tenacious muties you bumped into on the road,” he said. “I don’t want to run into them again. No point tempting fate.”

  Croxton shrugged. “Can’t say I blame you.”

  Maude White’s canvas-covered tractor wag trundled along at the rear of the group, carrying Vincent and J.B. as before. They had been joined by another passenger, the seemingly young girl Daisy. Daisy seemed restless, and she kept pulling the heavy curtain back and peering down the way they had just come.

  “You expecting someone, Daisy?” J.B. asked when he saw her peer out for a fourth time.

  She turned back and graced him with her warm, friendly smile. “I fucking hope not, mister,” she said. “What were those things we saw anyway? Back in that Tassel place.”

  “I don’t know what they were.”

  “They seemed pretty pissed,” Daisy drawled, shrugging.

  J.B. agreed. “People out here, outside of the villes, can be kind of territorial sometimes,” he explained.

  Sitting close to the front flap of the tentlike wag, Vincent White shook his balding head. “Those things weren’t people, friend.”

  “Mebbe they were once,” J.B. told them both, “a long time ago. Now they’re just territorial bastards with too much rad-blasted shit in their heads.”

  “Nothing like that in Babyville,” Daisy said. “Wouldn’t get past the gate.”

  “Have you seen them before?” Vincent asked Dix thoughtfully.

  “I’ve seen similar things,” J.B. assured him. “Muties of every stripe, things that you think might almost be human apart from one difference. Some of them are smart and some of them are triple stupe, but they all follow one basic rule—they protect themselves against outsiders.”

  “We all do that, Mr. Dix,” Vincent remarked, turning back to watch the path ahead as his wife urged more power from the wag’s chugging engine.

  “I guess we do, at that,” J.B. muttered.

  OTHER THAN THE occasional refueling stop, the wags didn’t pull to a halt until midafternoon. The winter sun was a distant white ball, low on the horizon. They had joined onto something called Route 25, whose occasional, surviving signs promised it would lead them to Newport, Morristown and Knoxville. Newport and Morristown had both turned out to be bombed-out wreckage. They hadn’t got as far as Knoxville.

  But in the midafternoon, they hit a snag. Ryan pulled the wide wag he drove to a shuddering halt, letting the engine tick over as he stared at what lay ahead. Where once there had been road, now there was just a huge crater, over a half-mile wide and hundreds of feet deep.

  Croxton looked behind them, watching the other wags dutifully pull to a halt. “What we going to do?” the old farmer asked, assessing the crater ahead of them.

  In his seat, Ryan was checking his lapel Geiger counter. The area was hot. “We need to turn around,” he decided, “and find another route. I’m not going in there.”

  “The sides aren’t that steep,” Croxton argued. “The wags can make it. Mebbe not this heap of crap, but the others can. We’ll double-up some.”

  Ryan looked at him, his blue eye holding Croxton’s gaze. “No, we won’t,” he said. “Some kind of missile hit that place, and whatever it was the residual radiation is still off the scale. We need to back up.”

  As Ryan began turning the wag, lurching toward the side of the crumbling Route 25, Croxton waved to the following wag train, indicating that they were to follow.

  “You know,” Croxton said as the harvester bumped over the wreckage of the blacktop and onto the dusty plains that surrounded the crater, “I would have just driven in if you hadn’t been here.”

  “Whatever Baby is offering,” Ryan told him, his eye locked on the uneven ground ahead, “you wouldn’t have survived two weeks after being in that heat. I don’t even like being this close.”

  Croxton shrugged, dismissing Ryan’s concerns. “Radiation is everywhere,” he said.

  “So are bullets,” Ryan told him, “but I don’t intend to stop long enough to catch one.”

  They continued trudging, bumping and crashing over the mess of wasteland that had once been lush fields and proud towns, feeling the wintry chill as the sun sank lower to the horizon.

  DOC GAZED OUT of the windows of Charles’s horse-drawn wag while Mildred sat in the back, squeezed between newcomer Alec and Mary and her baby. Alec’s head kept lolling back until he finally drifted off to sleep; the night in Tazewell had been exhausting for him, and his time in Mitch’s farmhouse had been restless, his sleep patchy. Alec gave a funny little snort-gurgle as the wag skipped over a bump in the field, and Mary and Mildred stifled laughter, looking at each other like guilty schoolchildren.

  “Wish I could sleep like that,” Mary said, keeping her voice low.

  Mildred looked at the baby in Mary’s arms. “At least Holly seems to be sleeping through it all,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Mary agreed dispiritedly. “She’s a well-behaved girl. Guess I should be thankful for that.”

  “Why are you here?” Mildred asked, admiring the baby in the woman’s arms. It was a question that had been on her mind for a while, but she surprised herself with the way she just blurted it out.

  “What?” Mary asked. “You mean, where’s the daddy or why am I running away?”

  “I didn’t realize you were running away,” Mildred said, her eyes meeting Mary’s. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  In response, Mary smiled. “That’s okay, Mildred. I don’t mind. You’ve been good to me, and you have a right to ask.”

  “It’s just that, you seem so young,” Mildred began, “to be looking for this promised fountain of eternal youth, I mean.”

  “I’m thirty-eight,” Mary told her. “Be thirty-nine soon, once spring rolls around.”

  After a moment’s thought, Mary continued. “You see Alec there?” she asked, indicating the blond-haired young man with the bow. “I’d just had Holly when Alec came to our farmhouse out near ’Tucky border. I mean, she was just two weeks old. And my old man, Joe, he was so mad with her. I thought he was going to kill me and her both. We already had two lovely children, you see, and there was no room in his heart for Holly.”

  “Raising a child is hard work,” Mildred said gently.

  “Holly isn’t his,” Mary said. “She’s mine, that’s true, but… Well, he had an accident and so she ain’t his. I tried to tell him about the man. I’d been at the nearest ville, an awful place—more blasters than brains inside those walls, I swear. I’d been there to trade some carrots and beets, try to get some better seeds,
because the farm was doing well by then. And this man, he’d said he wasn’t interested in carrots, he wanted something else.”

  Mary’s words trailed off and Mildred looked at the baby in her arms once again. “And you…?” Mildred encouraged.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” Mary said firmly. “I love my Joe. Wouldn’t do nothing like that. But this man, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Holly’s a rape-child, Mildred. That’s what she is.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Mildred said, her words barely a whisper.

  “I don’t mind,” Mary said. “I love her and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it? But this pool, this magical pool in Babyville… I figure that can fix us, restore us to what we was. Repair me. So Joe can love me again. Love us both.”

  The wag hopped over another lump in the track, and Holly woke with a start, her blue eyes popping open. A moment later she began to wail, and Mary soothed her, cooing words of consolation.

  The noise of the baby woke Alec then, and he groaned and swore as he looked around him. “Can you mebbe shut your brat up?” he asked, glaring at Mary, rubbing his hand over his tired face.

  The wags trundled on.

  TWO HOURS LATER, as they drove along another road, just a dirt track between the fallen ruins of civilization, Croxton told Ryan to turn off.

  “You know where we are?” Ryan asked.

  Croxton laughed. “I got me a fair idea,” he said, pointing. “Look.”

  Ryan looked where the man pointed, and saw people bent over, working in a field. They were planting crops in long rows, a half-dozen people working the field together. As Ryan looked around, he saw that other fields showed evidence of farming, and each one a handful of people—young and fit, some just children—worked at sowing and plowing and picking. One field had been left fallow, just the churned-up soil showing in the afternoon sun. Several youngsters were playing in the field, throwing a ball to one another.

  “Promised land, you reckon?” Croxton asked, unable to keep the joy from his tone.

  “We’ll see,” Ryan replied, urging the shuddering wag along the dirt track, trundling over a small rise.

  As they came over the rise, Croxton leaned forward in his seat, studying something in the far distance. Noticing, Ryan looked up from the road and off to the horizon. There, looming low on the skyline, were irregular, dark shapes, angling toward the cloudy, silver sky. It looked like the fingers of a dead man, reaching from the grave, grasping at the sky above.

  “We’re here,” Croxton said, the hint of pride in his voice. “That there is Baby.”

  Struggling with the wheel as the old harvester bumped over the pockmarked ground, Ryan glanced at the old farmer sitting beside him. “You’re sure?” he asked, turning his attention back to the dark shapes on the horizon.

  “Oh, this is it all right,” Croxton assured him. “Looks just like what Daisy described.”

  Ryan studied the structures of the ville as they drew closer, the other wags following in their wake. There was a wall, he saw now, a wide concrete structure almost ten feet in height. Its surface was smooth, reflecting the glint of the dwindling sun’s rays, and it looked substantial. There was a gate, Ryan saw, a towering hunk of wood strengthened by metal, that had been set in place in the structure of the wall. The gate looked incongruous, out of place in the smooth lines of the wall.

  Beyond the wall, towering above it, Ryan could see buildings now, the sunlight turning them into dark, brutal lines snatching at the sky. These were the dead man’s fingers he had seen when they had first bumped over the incline and spied the ville. Three in all, they looked firm, solid.

  Ryan was surprised. This didn’t look like a ville, not the kind he had imagined at least. He had expected some broken-down settlement of splintering shacks and rusting wags. Instead, here was a ville from another era. It looked like something from the old days, before skydark—a city. Nothing about it was temporary; it had been planned and constructed with thought, with one eye on the future.

  As Ryan led the convoy of wags toward the new ville called Baby, he wondered if what he was looking at was the future of humanity. Was this the kind of place that would finally replace the Deathlands? A place where people would be safe from the horrors of the outside world?

  Unconsciously, Ryan worked the accelerator, urging more power from the beast of a wag, jolting over the rough ground toward the gates of Baby.

  Chapter Twelve

  Working the brake, Ryan pulled his wag up to the imposing, wooden gate that waited in the high, concrete walls surrounding Babyville. There was a huge clock face to the side of the gates, high up in the wall and angled to catch the sun. The clock hands were still, stuck at 10:10 for slow eternity. Two other wags waited before him, engines idling as their occupants spoke to the sec men waiting in a sentry post beside the tall gate. The wag’s engine shuddered beneath him as Ryan scanned the top of the wall and the spaces around the gate, spotting more sec men.

  Behind Ryan’s wag, the four other vehicles in the convoy drew to a halt, waiting in line to see what would happen next. Out across from the ville, people were working in the fields, tilling at the land, turning it into something good again. The trace of a smile crossed Ryan’s lips when he saw this. Young men and women were out there, some just kids, trying to reap some good from the poisoned land. Perhaps this was the future, he thought. Perhaps this was what was needed to make the world right again.

  Beside him, Jeremiah Croxton was struggling to get up, clambering out of the bucket seat and working his way ungracefully down the short ladder that led down the side of the high wag.

  “Need me to come with you?” Ryan asked him.

  The old farmer nodded. “You’re my sec man, aren’t you?” he grunted.

  Ryan slipped out of his seat and leaped down from the wag, landing on the soft earth that formed an erratic track to the proud gate of the ville. He reached up and pulled his Steyr rifle from its cubbyhole beneath the driver’s seat, slung it over his shoulder by the carrying strap. It wouldn’t be much use here, and if they ran into trouble Ryan would rely on the SIG-Sauer he wore at his hip, but he disliked leaving the powerful rifle untended in case it was lifted while his attention was elsewhere. As he pulled it from its storage place, Alec the young-again lad, came running up to them from his place in another wag, reminding them of what needed to be done. Krysty followed him, her hand held close to her holstered weapon.

  “There’s a procedure,” Alec said. “They’ll want to check you out before you can enter.”

  “You’ve done this before,” Ryan stated. “Anything special we ought to know?”

  Alec shrugged. “Just be honest with them.”

  Ryan thanked him and indicated that he was to stay in his wag for now. Alec ran back to Charles’s four-wheel drive, kicking up the dirt as he went. Krysty followed, slamming the door behind him and standing ready at the front of the idling wag.

  Croxton walked over to the main entrance, his gait evincing a slight limp to the left as he walked.

  “You okay, Croxton?” Ryan asked as he caught up with the man.

  “Leg’s giving me trouble,” Croxton grumbled. “Sitting in that bone-shaking pile of crap too long.”

  Agreeing, Ryan smiled. It was good to be on his feet once again.

  Behind Ryan, in the line of wags, his companions were watching carefully to see what would happen next. In the rearmost wag, J.B. pushed through the canvas cover and dropped down to the ground, leaving Jak to cover the wag alone. As the Armorer walked past the next wag in the line, Daisy pushed forward and slipped from the back. J.B. gave her a fierce look. “I don’t need any backup, girl,” he said as he stalked past.

  Mildred and Doc waited at the doors of the next wag, and Krysty the one after. J.B. gave them each the same instructions. “Wait, keep your eyes open, don’t get trigger-happy unless you need to.” It was just reassurance; the companions had worked together for long enough that they knew how to handle situations like this.

&nb
sp; Up ahead, Ryan and Croxton made their way to the sentry booth and waited their turn. To Ryan’s surprise, an orderly line had formed there, each visitor waiting his turn under the watchful eyes of the sec men. Four sec guards—three men and one woman—stood watching the visitors, their expressions grim. Each was dressed in an armored vest over their clothes, and each held an automatic rifle in the at-ease position. Two more sec men—a man and a woman—stood inside the sentry post itself, looking over the visitors, interrogating them with practiced ease.

  Standing beside Croxton outside the sentry post, Ryan watched the proceedings warily. The sec men looked healthy, strong, and none of them looked to be over twenty-five. Two looked like teenagers, the girl in the booth couldn’t have been much older than thirteen.

  Babyville, Ryan thought, where the population keeps growing younger. For just a second, his hand tensed by the holster he wore at his hip.

  The travelers in the booth were being ushered out by the sec men. They were an elderly couple, husband and wife most likely, and neither of them would see sixty again. Their old, wrinkled faces vividly showed their relief, and Ryan watched as the sec men gave their battered old wag the once-over before letting them drive through into the ville. The huge gate was winched open to let the wag through, and Ryan saw now that it had a portcullis shielding it as well as the sturdy gate itself. Both needed to be opened separately before anyone could gain entry into the ville, like an airlock.

  That expression on the oldsters’ faces haunted Ryan’s thoughts. It said something. It said that they had found salvation, the promised land. Ryan wasn’t so sure.

  The line shuffled forward under the watchful eye of the sec men, and Ryan took everything in as he and Croxton waited their turn.

  The old man looked at Ryan, seeing the grim expression on the one-eyed man’s face. “You okay, son?” he asked.