Breakthrough Read online

  "And how's the tapeworm doing today, Doc?" Mildred asked back sweetly.

  Ryan pushed to his feet. "Come on, let's introduce ourselves," he said. "Stay alert. Watch the flanks."

  The companions emerged from the forest, fanning out with weapons up and ready. The river people were startled at first, but they said nothing. None of them made a move to approach or to retreat from the armed intruders. After a moment or two of standoff, the villagers surprised Ryan and the others by pointedly turning their backs on them, and refocusing their attention on the murky river and their braided ropes, each of which was strong enough to tow a war wagon. When Ryan advanced and opened his mouth to speak, a man wearing a translucent fish skin vest held up a hand for silence. There was a warning in his extremely close set black eyes. He pointed at the river, which silt and algae had turned the color of pea soup. Stretched across its width were floats made of clusters of blue plastic antifreeze jugs, tied together by their handles. The villagers had a fishing net out.

  Dean stepped over to the bank for a better look. As quick as a cat, the boy jumped back from the river's edge.

  Ryan swung up his 9 mm blaster in a two handed grip. Over its sights, twenty feet from shore, he saw a swirl, like water sheeting over a great boulder just under surface. Then a five foot long bone blade, like a dirty yellow, two-handed broadsword, slashed up through the surface. It gleamed for an instant, then disappeared beneath the murky flow. Ryan held his fire, as did J.B., who had his scattergun hip-braced and ready to roar.

  "Fireblast!" the Armorer sputtered. "What the hell was that?"

  "Shades of King Arthur and the Lady in the Lake!" Doc exclaimed.

  "King who?" J.B. said.

  Ignoring the question, Doc went on, "In this case, Excalibur appears sadly the worse for wear."

  Before the companions could unpuzzle Tanner's remarks, the strings of blue net floats jerked violently, then skittered across the water like a flock of leg-snared waterfowl. One by one, the clusters of antifreeze jugs glugged under the surface…and stayed there, trembling in the current.

  Whatever it was, it was caught fast.

  The villagers leaped to their ropes and pulled them taut, their bare feet sliding in the mud. Only when the creature swam up to the surface and began to thrash midriver, rolling and wrapping itself in the fishnet, did Ryan realize how big it was. The brown backed fish was easily thirty feet long. Its great tail slapped at the water as it momentarily turned belly up.

  Before the river beast could get its bearings, the villagers began to draw in the net. Men, women and children hauled for all they were worth, their legs and backs straining. As they retreated from the waterline with the net in tow, they made the great fish roll over and over, further entangling itself.

  The gargantuan mutated catfish flopped onto its belly on the edge of the bank, showering mud in all directions. Its mouth gaped. The gigantic lips looked plump and rubbery and almost human, as did the pale tongue. Its eyes, which were set far apart on a broad, flat skull wider than a man was tall, radiated a terrible fury. The ventral and dorsal fins were extended through the mesh, as were their cruel serrated spines. The cruelest of all stood atop its back like a hellship's mast.

  Unable to pull the fish any farther onto shore, the villagers secured the free ends of their ropes around the tree trunks at the edge of the clearing. One of the men cautiously approached the animal. He walked stiffly, his head lowered, shoulders slumped, obviously very much afraid. Behind him, a pair of village women began to wail and cry and tear at their own hair.

  "I don't like the looks of this," J.B. said out of the corner of his mouth. "Why don't they stop that guy? What the blazes is going on?"

  "A chillin'," Jak said.

  Ryan sensed it, too. Not just danger, but death.

  The ropes groaned as the great fish lunged against the net. With a crack like a pistol shot, the line at its head parted in the middle, one end sailing high into the trees. Before the man standing beside the beast could retreat, it had him. Whipping its head sideways, the fish sank the point of a ventral spine into his chest, then it rolled on top of him. With impacts that shook the ground, it flopped, using its tremendous weight to pound the man and the impaling spine into the soft mud.

  The screaming villagers grabbed the loose end of rope and drew it tight, then they angled the other lines until the fish was once again pinned flat on its belly.

  Too late.

  Skewered on the spine was a muddy, bloody rag doll, the head lolling backward on a broken neck. Three men carefully slid the body off the bone broad sword and laid it down gently on the bank a safe distance away. A handful of villagers, including the wailing women, knelt beside the corpse, sobbing. With cupped hands they dripped river water on the body, tenderly washing the mud and blood from the face and chest.

  "Ugly way to croak," Jak spit.

  "Let's make sure nobody else gets nailed by that rad blasted thing," Ryan said.

  The companions quickly formed a firing squad beside the fish's head. But before they could shoot, the man in the fish skin vest jumped in front of the raised muzzles, waving his hands. "No, no!" he shouted at them. "No lead! The metal will put a curse on the meat."

  With that, the village leader scrambled onto the fish's head, using the net's mesh for hand and footholds. He was joined by another man who carried an ironwood club and a three foot long bone sword. The leader took the sword and knelt down, feeling around on the fish's forehead with his fingertips.

  "What's he doing?" Dean asked.

  "He's looking for the seam in the skull," Ryan replied. "A weak spot in the bone."

  The village leader found what he was searching for. He positioned the sword point against the skull, dropped his hands below the skin wrapped grip and nodded to the second man, who raised the club and struck the pommel of the sword a mighty blow. The impact echoed sharply off the riverbank's trees, and the serrated blade sank in a foot.

  The great fish didn't seem to notice.

  But when the man dealt it a second blow, driving the sword in another foot, the animal went berserk, humping up and heaving its body against the net, its long, fleshy whiskers curling and cracking like bull whips. The man struck again with the club before the fish could throw them off. On the third whack, the blade slipped in to the hilt, the mutie catfish's eyes went dead, and its entire length began to quiver.

  The villagers sent up a cheer and began preparations for the butchering. After untangling the net, several of the strongest men pried open its jaws, propping them wide apart with an ironwood stake sharpened at both ends. One of the men crawled inside the yawning mouth. Using the tip of his knife, he cut the lining of the throat away from the surrounding bone and muscle, and then disappeared into the dark cavity of its body. After a few minutes passed, he stepped out of the mouth, covered in blood and pulling the free end of the throat lining behind him.

  The other villagers joined in and they began dragging the guts out of the catfish, five feet at a time. As they gave the empty, pale gray tube of muscle the heave-ho, it stretched down to the size of a man's arm. On the third pull, the tube caught on the far side of the stake. Redoubling their efforts, the villagers managed to free it.

  The cause of the hang-up popped out onto the mud.

  Inside the opaque gut lining was a blue-dark bulge easily as long as a man.

  "Is it a person?" Dean asked, awed. "It looks like a person!"

  The village leader immediately stopped the proceedings and using a borrowed sword, hacked through the gut tube in a single swipe. Covered in slime, a hairless, earless, mottled blue head peeped out. Its gaping jaws were lined with rows of needlelike teeth, its beady eyes had been turned the color of milk by the fish's corrosive digestive juices.

  "Mutie eel," Jak pronounced, matter of factly. "Big un."

  The eel's jaws snapped shut like a bear trap.

  It was blind, but it sure wasn't dead.

  The headman could have easily lopped off its head, but he j
ust stared at it, sword at his side. The eel, sensing freedom, shot out of the fish's gut, frantically sidewinding for the defenseless women and children clustered on the bank. The women and children could have scattered to safety, but they didn't. They stood there. Waiting.

  Whether the eel intended them harm or just wanted back in the river, Krysty reacted at once. Stepping between the onrushing animal and the innocents, she raised and fired her Model 640 Smith & Wesson. The .38-caliber slug hit the eel square in the head, knocking it down, but not out. It writhed in the mud, toothy jaws snapping. Krysty gingerly pinned the thick neck to the ground with her boot heel, leaving the tail end free to slap and churn. Kneeling down, she held the muzzle of the revolver against the side of its head and snapped the cap. The coup de grace cratered the eel's skull and sent a plume of blood, brains and bone fragments splashing into the river,

  As Krysty straightened, the women and children encircled her, making cooing noises as they stroked the arms and hem of her fur coat.

  "It's okay, really, it's okay," she told them, carefully holding the blaster out of their reach. They wouldn't be put off. They continued stroking the furry coat sleeves and cooing at her.

  When things finally settled down, Ryan and the others retired to the shade of the forest's edge to watch the rest of the butchering. The village men skinned back the hide at the tail and started hacking out great, foot thick slabs of pale pink flesh. These were passed to the women, who skewered them on ironwood sticks and began char-roasting them over the open fires. The sweet aroma of blackened catfish set the companions' empty bellies to gurgling.

  After a few minutes, the headman walked over to where they sat. He carried an uncapped antifreeze jug, which he handed to Ryan. The one-eyed man sniffed the spout. "Whew!" he said. "That's powerful staff."

  "It's brewed from the fruit of the strangler vine," the village leader told him. "Drink and enjoy yourselves. After she has been served, the feast will begin."

  "Who's 'she'?" Krysty asked.

  "Sirena," the leader said. "She told us of your coming, of the great fish, of Chambo's death on its spine and the eel alive in its gut. Sirena sees all, and knows all."

  "A doomie!" Dean exclaimed.

  None of the others said a word. Ryan knew they were all thinking the same thing.

  Bullshit.

  Though doomies actually existed in Deathlands, the genuine article was as rare as a thirteen year old virgin. Real doomies were a unique race of humans, possibly mutated, possibly not. Each individual was gifted to a varying degree with the second sight, the ability to see past and future events. Usually, however, the folks claiming to have the doomie sight turned out to be con artists or coldheart chillers.

  The companions watched as a floppy breasted young woman carried a smoking hunk of fish past them on a carved bone platter. Escorted by the village leader, she disappeared into a hut at the end of the line.

  Doc took the antifreeze jug from Ryan and tried a long swallow.

  "By the Three Kennedys!" he croaked, wiping his streaming eyes and nose. "A ferment drawn straight from Satan's piss pot!"

  "That good, huh?" J.B. said, accepting the jug.

  "Go easy," Ryan warned.

  After a single gasp and shiver producing gulp, J.B. handed the joy juice to Krysty, who whiffed it, made a face and passed it on to Jak without tasting.

  In contrast to the companions' restraint, the male villagers hit their blue jugs hard, and the effects were immediate. Joined by their headman, they started singing, waving their arms and stamping their feet in the mud. Their toneless song was as repetitive as it was nerve grating. And they directed it, and the accompanying rhythmic hip gyrations, toward their guests.

  "We are rulers of the forest and the river," they howled. "We chill the great beasts with their own bones. Our powerful and manly seed will live forever."

  "Now there's a comforting thought," Mildred muttered to herself.

  At that point, another woman stepped forward and laid down a heaping platter of cooked fish before them. The companions used their bare hands to tear into the char-crusted and still scorching hot meat.

  "Tastes like free range snake," J.B. remarked around a full mouth. He paused to extract a thin fibrous strand from between his teeth. "A hell of a lot more parasites, though," he said, flicking the three inch serpentine of unchewable tissue into the forest.

  The dinner bell ended the village men's caterwauling. They took seats in the shade across from the companions and started to eat. The women and children sat behind them.

  Partway through the feast, one of the men gave the leader a nudge, indicating the young woman waving at him from the doorway of the far hut. The headman, who had washed down the fish course with numerous gulps of strangler wine, rose unsteadily to his feet, and said, "Sirena has been fed. You will pay your respects to her, now."

  Ryan nodded. "It would be our pleasure."

  The village leader ushered them into the tiny hut that was occupied by a withered old woman. She sat in an inverted catfish skull, a rocking chair hollowed out and packed with an excelsior of dried vine fibers. Over her skinny shoulders, she wore a fish skin cape with a tall, spiky fishbone collar. In her hand she held a long bone pipe, which gave off the pungently sweet smell of herbal tobacco. Even in the dim light filtering through the translucent yellow walls and the haze of smoke, Ryan could see that Sirena's pupils and irises were the color of milk. Like the eel's.

  Dean was struck by this, as well, and whispered to his father, "Was she swallowed by a fish, or was she born blind?"

  "If you've got a question, young man," Sirena said in a gravelly voice, "best ask me direct."

  "Okay," Dean said. "You get eaten by a fish?"

  A hoarse, cackling laugh burst from the old woman's throat. "Eaten and spit right back on the bank," she said. "See these beauty marks it gave me?" Skeletal fingers traced down both sides of her face, pointing out the stripes of pink-white discoloration where the flesh had been etched away. Her scalp had hairless patches of the same color. "Right off, folks around here took my coming out of that fish alive as a sign and a wonderment. And it was a bigger wonderment than anyone dreamed. Inside that fish's belly I lost normal sight, but I gained the doomie sight. Or mebbe I had it ail along, and never knew until my eyes got melted away."

  The blind woman sniffed at the air like a rabbit, horning in on the exact location of Ryan's son.

  "I've had visions about you, young man," Sirena said to Dean. "You and your six fine friends. Come sit here, and I'll tell you all about them…" She spread her thin legs and patted her sagging lap.

  Dean wrinkled his nose. "Not bastard likely," he said, crossing his arms over his still narrow boy's chest.

  "If you've got something to say to us," Ryan told her, "let's hear it."

  "There's doubt in your voice," she said. "Looking for proof, are we? Well, how about I tell you something you already know? Your names? Your mothers' names? Their mothers' names?"

  "Madam," Doc said, "if you could, as you suggest, pronounce the names of all our maternal grandmothers, it would certainly be evidence in your favor."

  The old woman dismissed her own idea with a wave of her hand. "Nah, the back sight is too easy," she said. "And it proves nothing. There's other ways I could've found out the names. I didn't, but that's beside the point. It's the foresight, the telling of what's to come, that's the real test of doomie power. How about this for proof? There's a new kind of human being prowling the Deathlands. Not mutie spawned. These folks come from elsewhen."

  "You mean elsewhere?" Ryan said.

  Sirena turned her head, following the sound of his voice. "No, Master Cawdor, I mean what I said, elsewhen. Another stretch of time in another place altogether. Our time and place and this other one started out identical, as alike a pair of fish eggs, but oh how different they grew. Nightmare different. These new people are a cross between us and a cockroach."

  Expressions of surprise flickered over the companions' faces. />
  "My, my, it's gotten mighty quiet all of a sudden," Sirena said, returning to her pipe.

  In the hut's golden gloom, Ryan watched her rock and blow smoke for a minute, then said, "That's the past, dead and buried. You said you were going to tell us the future."

  The old woman chuckled. "It is the future. Your future, Master Half-Blind. I don't create it. I can't change it. I only see it with these…" With the tip of the pipe stem, she indicated the pale, hard-cooked eggs that were her eyes.

  "Evidence, madam," Doc interjected, emphasizing the point by rapping the hut's dirt floor with his walking stick. "We require substantial and convincing evidence of your claims."

  "Oh, I'll give you all the evidence you need," Sirena replied. "There's a brand-new star in the sky. Hasn't been a new star like that in more than a hundred years."

  Ryan didn't get her drift, right off. He wasn't alone. The companions exchanged impatient looks. "We wouldn't know anything about that," he said. "We haven't seen the night sky for almost two weeks now."

  "Well, you'll all see it tonight, over the river," the blind woman told him. "It's not a proper star, mind you. It doesn't twinkle like it should. And it sails from one side of the horizon to the other in the span of twenty heartbeats. This star was planted in the heavens by a roaring, flaming spear taller than the tallest tree in the forest."

  Mildred leaned close to Ryan and whispered, "She means a goddamn guided missile. It's not a star she's talking about. It's a recon satellite!"

  The one-eyed man had already figured that out. If what the old woman said was true, then he and the companions had failed to permanently close the passageway between realities.

  "Master Cawdor," the doomie said, "the cockroaches are already here, they are many, and there will be hell to pay."

  "If you really can see into the future," Ryan said, leaning close to her, "then explain it to us in detail."