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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate
THE RAIN PERSISTED all through the afternoon, turn-ing hollows into puddles,
puddles into pools, the beds of dry creeks into streams, streams into frothing
tor-rents of muddy water that tore at the roots of trees and filled with plants and
the corpses of small, helpless creatures.
Jak managed to calm his wife, hugging her close as they all cowered in a
makeshift shelter of broken branches. Mildred dozed off, head against Dean's
shoulder. The boy had hardly spoken since hearing the news of his father's
disappearance, and seemed to be slipping away into a dark world of his own. His
face remained blank, eyes like stone.
J.B. had gone out before evening completely closed off the day's light and scouted
along the trail they'd been trying to follow, which was leading them deep into a
maze of arroyos and ravines.
But the weather had defeated him.
The rain battered down in a solid wall. J.B. remem-bered one of the Trader's
stories. He'd never really believed it, but now it suddenly seemed to be entirely
possible.
Jimmy McCluskey had been a top gunner on War Wag Two. Everyone suspected
him of having a main-line jolt habit, but he was always too clever to get caught at
it. Then he started showing the symptoms of one of the horrific diseases that still
clung to a malev-olent life in dark corners of Deathlands. This one was known as
"trips."
According to the Trader's version of McCluskey's ending, the man had realized
that all that remained of his life would be short, brutish and painful.
It had been raining like it was now.
The way it was told, McCluskey had gone out alone at night and stood in the
open, head back, face turned to the dark heavens, mouth gaping wide, hands down
at his sides.
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate
And drowned.
As J.B. picked his way through the dripping, dank wilderness, he thought about
the story. At times it almost seemed like the air around him was too
super-saturated with water for a man to be able to breathe.
When he got back, he woke Mildred.
"Anything?" she asked, rubbing her eyes on her wet sleeve.
"No. Any tracks there might have been are long gone now."
"So?"
"Sleep. Wake up and it'll have stopped raining. And we go on deeper. Until we
find them."
Mildred smiled at him. "Then we rescue them and go home safe and live happily
ever after."
"Yeah. Something like that."
Chapter Twenty-Three
The atmosphere in the stickies' camp was thoroughly miserable. Although nobody
actually came and told the prisoners, they saw the corpse of the young man that
Charlie had maimed being carried away in a crude litter, uncovered rain pattering
down into his staring eyes.
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate
"Guess he must have bled to death," Red Folsom said.
"Got what you wanted," Helga taunted, nudging Harold.
But the fat young man ignored her.
The day dragged on in a strange, desultory sort of way. There was a ceaseless
rain, skirling around the canyon, making it hard to see more than fifty yards in any
direction. It was coming off the cliff above the ancient dwellings in a solid sheet
of dull silver, pour-ing down into the river that was widening among the trees.
Charlie kept away from them. Food was brought in what was probably the middle
of the day. It was the same sort of hot, spiced stew.
"Get used to it, Ryan," Abe said with a cackling laugh.
"This all there is? Well, I guess I've eaten a lot less and a whole lot worse."
Red grinned mirthlessly. "Sure. The finest stew in the finest stickie camp in all
Deathlands."
Helga wiped her metal dish clean with a hunk of corn bread. "This place serves
beans well done, beans medium rare, beans over-easy, beans on the side, bean
salad, chicken-fried beans and refried beans. I leave anything out?"
"Yeah," Danny said, lying awkwardly on his right side to take any pressure off his
broken ankle. "You forgot something, Helga."
"What?"
"Just plain beans."
RYAN TRIED TO TALK to the other captives, weighing them up, trying to
figure how they might react when the firing pin came down.
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate
Danny, despite his pain, was more than ready to do what he could.
"Trouble is, Ryan, it's little I can do."
There was no doubt about Helga. Just put a sawed-off in her hands and a box of
12-gauge shells, and she'd take out an army of stickies.
"Heard trouble was around," she said, "but I didn't figure it for stickies. Neighbor
to the west, away from Jak and Christina's spread, lost cattle and a couple of his
men to a sickness. Wondered if there was lepers traveling through."
"Lepers! Fireblast, I haven't heard of them since I was in my teens. Thought they'd
died off."
Helga shook her head, brushing away an importu-nate blowfly. "Nope. We get all
sorts of crazies." She poked the Very Reverend Joe-Bob Jarman with her toe.
"That right, isn't it, preacher man? Some real crazies."
He turned away from her, presenting his back in its tight broadcloth suit.
Helga grinned at Ryan, making a jerk-off move-ment with her right hand.
He grinned right back at her.
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