Ice and Fire

Chapter Twenty

"Saw an old movie, back when I was... you know. It was Japanese, and about a sort of ace swordsman coming to a ville like this. He found two warring groups there, and they both wanted him to help them against the other. In the end, they kind of wiped each other out and he moved on. Seems a bit like that, here in Snakefish."

Ryan nodded. "Sure is. Looks like this place is a pan fit to boil. Baron's lost his hold. The Motes got the power. Folks in the middle go along with the power."

Doc was sitting on the bed, cleaning his nails with one of Jak's throwing knives. "Go with the power. Always have and always will. Show them a whip and they'll fall down to kiss it."

Rick stood and walked to the window, stooping to peer out across the street. Ryan noticed that he was less steady on his feet than he'd been on the way to the service, when he'd had the help of the stick.

The freezie turned back to face the others in the room. "Meant to ask you, though I have the feeling I'm not going to like the answer very much. Just what is a stickie?"

J.B. told him. "After the long winters Deathlands was full of hot spots."

"Centers of high radiation?"

"Right. Seems that the nuking did some strange things to animals and plants."

"And people," Lori added with a dramatic shudder.

"And people," the Armorer agreed. "You saw the snakes. There's plenty of mutie creatures of all kinds. Some grossed out. Some you have to look real hard to see what's wrong. Stickies are kind of obvious."

"What do stickies do? Stick to you, I guess. Is that it?"

The smile faded at the expression on J.B.'s face. "Right, Rick. They have kind of suckered hands. Some have feet the same. They can hang on smooth surfaces, like the side of a wag."

"Terrific. And there's a gang of them around here someplace?"

Ryan nodded. "So they say. Oh, there's a couple of other facts you should know about stickies. First is that they generally love all kinds of fires and explosions. Sometimes get themselves killed going too close to grens or flames."

"What's the other thing this twentieth-century boy should know about stickies, Ryan? I can hardly wait."

"Stickies all have a homicidally vicious hatred of all other living things."

Rick whistled. "Hell's bells! Like I said, I can hardly wait."

They were halfway through lunch when Carla Petersen arrived at the Rentaroom Hotel. Ruby Rainer was bringing in a tureen of stew with sweet potatoes and okra, sniffing with audible disapproval at Baron Brennan's assistant.

"Good noon to you, Mrs. Rainer. I'm not here to help myself to your food, though that doessmell so good! I just want a word with our outlander brothers and sisters, if you don't mind."

"Sure. Go ahead." The woman flounced out of the room, muttering something that sounded amazingly like "mercies" as she went.

"Hollow tooth! That dried-up old bitch would sell her own kin to the feedings. If she had any kin to sell."

"What's a feeding?" J.B. asked quickly.

Carla picked at a small gravy stain on the cloth in front of her, hesitating briefly before she answered him. "A feeding's when... Only about one a year. Less some years. More in... Gas doesn't run so free or there's a sickness in the cattle or the crops fail or the rains don't come."

"And the creeks don't rise," Rick muttered absently to himself.

"Then the Motes have a big service... lasts for hours on end. They go into the brush and consult the oracles. How the big snakes are moving. Trails. Shed-skin. All kinds of things. Then they proclaim a need for a feeding."

Doc coughed, laying down his knife and fork. "I have lived long enough, Miss Petersen, to hear the words behind the words."

"How's that, Doctor Tanner?"

"A feeding. To my ears it sounds as though you really mean a killing."

She didn't answer, remaining preoccupied with the mark on the cloth.

J.B. took up the question. "That right, Carla? What Doc says? You mean someone gets chilled and offered to those slimy mutie bastards?"

"John!" Carla looked quickly at the closed door of the dining room with something very close to panic in her eyes.

"What?"

"Words like that will bring you all into the coils, John Dix. Ruby Rainer's one of the best informers in the ville. A breath here becomes a hurricane by the time it reaches the ears of the Motes. You musttake care with your talk!"

Ryan leaned across the table, the congealing stew on his plate forgotten. "We're talking sacrifice, Carla? Is that it?"

"Edgar tries to stop it. Maybe he holds it in check. Marianne and her kin, they got the blood taste, Ryan. If the baron falls, then the ville will slide into butchery. If you could only help him. You got blasters and you look like you know how to use them. Couldn't you?.."

Ryan caught J.B.'s eyes across the table, but was unable to read them behind the blank glass of his spectacles.

"We keep telling everyone that we aren't mercenaries, Carla. Means we won't hire out. There's enough men around Deathlands who'll chill for a pocketful of jack."

"Women, too," Krysty added thoughtfully.

"Yeah. Women as well. But not us. We saw the problem — old baron weakening, generous with the ville's main wealth. The Motes, scenting power for themselves. It's not a new story, Carla. We've seen it all before. But that doesn't mean we'll get involved in it. I'm sorry."

"They'll kill him and use the bikers to shut down anyone who tries to stand up. Doesn't that matter?"

The words were aimed at Ryan, but her eyes focused on J.B., who answered her. "It matters, Carla. In Deathlands you just can't step aside for every problem, every difficulty. There's always been killing in Deathlands, since the smoke settled after dark day. Rad-blast it! We just can't help everyone."

It was an unusually strong outburst from the taciturn Armorer. His normally sallow face was flushed, and his fingers tapped nervously on the edge of the long table.

"Edgar said you wouldn't help."

"Norman Mote offered to double whatever you were paying us. Told him the truth." Ryan remembered his food and stirred it with his fork, sniffing. "Guess I'll pass on this. No, Carla. Couple of days and we'll be gone."

"A lot can happen in two days," she said, standing slowly, looking around at the seven faces. "Sorry to have interrupted the eating."

After she'd left the dining room, bumping into Ruby Rainer in the hallway, the silence lasted a long time.

The roar of the two-wheel wags told everyone in the rooming house that the Hell's Angels had come calling.

The engines were cut, and Ryan, sitting on his bed, heard a voice shouting. Krysty tugged the window open and leaned out, seeing Jak's head at the next window along. She turned back to the room and warned Ryan.

"They come for the kid," she said.

"How many?"

"Four. Not Zombie. What d'you think, lover? Gonna stop him?"

Ryan swung his legs to the floor and cat-footed across the creaking boards. He pulled the edge of the curtain back and peered out, letting one hand gently caress Krysty's nape. She eased her body against his, the dazzling crimson hair brushing over his fingers.

There was Priest, with his beard trimmed, on his Triumph twin; Ruin, wearing sunglasses with one lens missing, on a flame-streak BMW; the huge bulk of Riddler, oozing off both sides of the saddle of his enormous motorbike, which had been chopped together from a variety of different machines; and the bare-headed Dick the Hat.

"Wanna come for a run, Jak?" Ruin bellowed, staring up at the albino boy.

"Mebbe."

They saw Ryan behind the curtain. "Hey, Cawdor. Wanna come for a run?"

He wrestled with the stubborn window, finally managing to lever it upward. "Where?"

"Death Valley Road. See if we can find us some stickies."

"Don't go, Ryan. Could be a trap. Got a bad feeling about it." Krysty's fingers tightened on his hand, squeezing hard enough to make him wince in surprise.

"Sure? I can't see those double-stupe rednecks ever getting a stickie."

"How about the stickies getting themselves some double-stupe rednecks, Ryan?"

"Got a point. I'll go along with Jak. Kind of keep an eye on things."

Krysty smiled and kissed him on the cheek. "Since you've only got one eye, lover, that's about all you cankeep on him."

"You coming?" Dick the Hat shouted.

"Can go?" Jak called eagerly to Ryan.

"Sure," the one-eyed man replied. "Bring your blaster."

Jak rode pillion behind Ruin on the big BMW bike. Ryan clung on to the rear seat of the Triumph, balancing to the bends and bumps in the road, seeing ahead over Priest's shoulders. The light blue ribbons in the long, greasy hair fluttered in the wind of their passing.

Ryan hadn't ridden on a two-wheel wag for years, but the breathtaking rush of exhilaration came speeding back. His own hair was ruffled, and he could feel the warm desert air plucking at the patch covering his left eye. He'd left the caseless G-12 checked at the Rentaroom, contenting himself with his handgun and the long steel panga.

"You ever seen?" Priest shouted, his words almost whipped away by their speed.

Ryan leaned forward to reply, suddenly catching the stench of the rider's stained blue denims. "Seen a few," he said.

"We never catch 'em. I seen some, in the distance like. But they all fucked off when they heard us coming. Got no balls for a mix with the Last Heroes."

"They giving you trouble?"

Priest didn't reply immediately, concentrating on swerving the heavy chopper around a massive hole in the road. It looked like a landie had gone off, by the size of the crater.

"Yeah," he finally grunted. "You know we got a lotta gas. Ground's full of it out near where we have our base. By the old park. But there's some outlying wells. That's where we're going now, the one toward Death Valley."

The knowledge that none of his companions had ever actually faced gave Ryan pause for thought. Of all the muties that roamed the Deathlands, stickies were among the worst — ferocious and inexorable in their desire to attack normies. He wished that he could have warned Jak about what they might be riding into. But the noise of the hogs and the speed at which they were traveling made that impossible. A glance at the speedo told Ryan they were racing along the shifting surface of the old highway at something close to seventy miles an hour, which was about as fast as he'd ever been. Because of the poor quality of processed gas, few wags could manage much more than forty. A tuned-up war wag with all its armor was lucky to reach fifty.

Jak was leaning perilously on the BMW, hands locked in the small of his back, his keen-edged reflexes allowing him to roll with every movement of the powerful two-wheeler. His long hair blew behind him like a streamlined helmet of purest white and his eyes, as he turned to grin across at Ryan, flamed like living embers.

The boy gave a piercing banshee scream of unbridled pleasure, punching the air with his right fist, making the rider wobble and yell a curse over his shoulder at the teenager.

The land was a monotonous reddish orange, with occasional relieving areas of gray or pale yellow. The road unrolled itself, mainly straight, with an occasional dip and swoop. On one side the ruins of an old post-and-wire fence leaned drunkenly toward the distant hills. They saw no signs of life. Twice they passed abandoned drilling rigs, twisted and rusting.

"Any snakes around here?" Ryan shouted.

"Not this way. All in the brush between the ville and the mountains. Nobody goes far that way. Azrael and his brothers and sisters see to that."

The sky was a rich pink, streaked with blue, stippled with fragments of high, scudding chem clouds. Once Ryan spotted a circling hawk, riding a thermal far above them. It was so high that he couldn't judge its size, but the wingspan seemed unusually wide.

They stopped after a half hour for Riddler to relieve himself, standing by the side of the highway, legs spread, whistling loudly to himself.

Dick the Hat was waiting, close by Ryan. "When you get to join the Last Heroes, you get your colors initiated like that."

"Like what?"

"Put on the denims and lie down and all the brothers stand around and piss all over you."

"Fireblast!" Ryan said. "Sounds a whole wag of laughs."

The Angel looked at him suspiciously, but said nothing.

"Much farther?"

"Five miles. Road gets worse. Gotta slow some. Beyond that bunch of hills."

Eye watering from the dusty wind, Ryan squinted around the bikers back and saw that the highway was rising slowly, leading toward a group of mesas. As they drew nearer he could make out that there had been some major earth movements and rocks had slipped down across the blacktop.

Ruin was in the lead, and he held up a hand as a warning to the others that they were swinging off the pavement onto a dirt trail with deep ruts that coiled to the left. Speed dropped to a little more than walking pace; dust billowed around them, choking and blinding. The three other Last Heroes dropped back, spacing themselves to avoid the orange clouds.

"Nearly there!" the biker shrieked, his face a mask of sand-covered sweat.

The rocking and bouncing was almost unbearable as the bike jolted over the bumps, its century-old suspension creaking and rattling. Ryan had to hang on to Priest's back to keep himself on the bike, trying to breathe through his mouth to avoid choking.

Dimly, on either side of the Triumph, Ryan could make out walls of tumbled, frost-riven boulders, rising forty feet or more above them.

Concentrating hard on breathing and staying in the saddle, Ryan had neglected his fighting senses. The hair at his nape had begun to prickle, warning him that this was a dangerous place to be.

He was taken completely by surprise when a semi-naked, mewing creature launched itself at him from out of nowhere, hurling him from the bike. He landed flat on his back in the dirt, with needle-sharp teeth questing toward his neck and a suckered hand reaching for his good eye.