Neutron Solstice

Chapter Thirteen

"It's like the DMZ in 'Nam," said J. B. Dix. "Read 'bout, it. No-go region, for both sides. What we heard 'bout this Baron Tourment, he controls most of the land round Lafayette. But not this ville of West Lowellton."

"White wolf," said Ryan. "Or snow wolf. Take, your pick. What we heard back in Moudongue, it's renegades. Gang of wolf's-heads. Outlaws."

"Slumgullions," commented Doc Tanner.

"How's that?" asked Finnegan.

The old-timer bared his strong yellow teeth in a ferocious grin. "Good word, is it not? A cant perversion of the tongue, but it sounds like what it means." Licking his lips, he savored the word again. "Slumgullion. A rowdy fellow, living beyond the law. And as we are all aware, to do that you most be honest."

There were times when Doc simply didn't make any sense to anyone.

Bedrock bedding prices. Buy nowЧ tomorrow may be too late.

The white lettering was inside a store window a few yards down the street. But it was obviously written before the neutron missiles were dropped over the Louisiana bayous.

"What do we do, Ryan?" asked Krysty, glancing up and down the street. Behind them, a small armadillo scuffled across the street, but otherwise the avenue was deserted.

"We could try and make it through the swamps to the gateway. But I figure them Cajuns are going to be looking for us. And there's those dead and alive fuckers to keep clear of."

"What about that warning?" asked Finn, pointing back at the first of the freshly painted signs.

"Place like this..." Ryan began, pausing as he looked around the rows of long derelict buildings, "...place like this could get you cold-cocked from anywhere. Man with a good blaster could pick us all off before we got a sight on him."

Both Ryan and J.B. had outstanding memories for trails and maps, and both had a clear sense of where they were in relation to the rest of the ville. If the Baron that everyone was shitting their pants over ruled most of the region, then West Lowellton looked like the best venture, they decided. But if there was this street-gang holding it, then they had to find some place large in which to hole up.

"Big motel," suggested J.B.

"Yeah," Ryan nodded. "Yeah. There was something called a Holiday Inn. We passed it 'bout a half mile back. Be a good place."

"There was an old vid-house near there, with a real pre-chill name. The Adelphi." J.B. shook his head at the absurdity of the names in the prenuke ville.

"Probably showing some anticommy prop-vids. I read that was all they showed round that time." Finnegan was leaning against the wall of a store, Barney's Beanery, that had once sold health foods. There was an addition to the sign: and gun store.

Faded by thousands upon thousands of days of sun and wind, there was some crude lettering on the wall of a store across the street.

"GOD WANTS YOU," it said.

Underneath it, in the same white paint as the earlier graffiti, was written: "THEN LET HIM FUCKING COME AN GET ME."

Krysty heard the sound first.

It was a faint tinkling noise, thin and metallic, a long way from where they stood. It had an insistent rhythm, clicking away, first two fast beats, then a slow one. Two fast, one slow.

Ryan considered running for the rows of neat white houses behind the stores to lie in ambush for whomever was coming. But it didn't take a tactical genius to figure out that their attackers would have better local knowledge than they did.

"There's a chill in here," said Finnegan, flattening his snub nose against the dusty window. "Just bones heaped together."

"Nothing else? No blasters?" asked J.B.

"No. Big poster on the back wall, half-torn. Says, 'Brownsville Texas is the fucking pits.' Oh, and one other over a door. Big heart with the words 'I love Lafayette.' That's all they wrote."

The chinking sound was growing closer. Krysty looked at Ryan. "You know there's two, mebbe three of them , doing it?"

"I can hear that."

"So?"

"Let's, go find us that Holiday Inn place we saw on the map."

Grimacing, Doc straightened, pushing at the base of his spine with his right hand. "I fear I am not so supple as once was. Did you say we were all going to seek out a Holiday Inn in which to rest?"

"Yeah, Doc."

"Then let us trust that the best surprise we get will be no surprise at all."

"Sure," replied Ryan, wondering what the old man was babbling about.

The large sign that had once welcomed Kiwanis, Elks, baseball teams and homecoming queens had rusted and fallen to the dirt, probably half a century ago.

"What the fuck is a Kiwanis?" muttered Finnegan, not really expecting an answer and not getting one.

As they left the shopping street on the edge of West Lowellton, the metallic drumming seemed to fade away. Krysty swore she heard someone laughing, crazed and long, but she might have been mistaken.

Ryan led them at a brisk pace, with the Armorer at the rear constantly checking that they weren't being followed. Here the streets were narrower, with older properties built on either side. Most had rickety mailboxes, many still showing the dragon's-head logo of the West Lowellton Comet and Advertiser. Off the main drag they saw more sun-bleached bones scattered here and there. On a wooden porch several skeletons were jumbled together as if a family had chosen to die together.

The sun shone through the long branches of the whitebeam trees that lined the dappled suburban streets. Intermittently they came upon the rotting remnants of automobiles, their tires long gone, settled on their hubs. They were overwhelmed by the visible tragedy of the Big Chill of 2001. It wasn't like just reading about it, or hearing from some old tapes. This was nowand this was real.

The Holiday Inn stood on a slight mound in the center of a maze of small waterways. Some had silted up; some had dried to lush valleys of moss; some still flowed with gurgling muddy water. The motel itself was a sprawling single-story structure, originally painted white and built with central pillars and columns in the American Colonial style. On its western flank a tall sycamore had died and fallen, breaking three windows. The flowering shrubs that once bad been carefully tended now ran wild, with azaleas and bougainvillea rampant, clear across the circular drive and parking spaces, flooding into the railed swimming pool with its turquoise slide. The permanently green Astroturf was covered with lichen.

The six of them stood and stared. Finn spat onto the dusty road, then started and peered down by his boots. "Fucking tracks, Ryan."

Ryan mentally cursed himself for being so careless. He'd been so interested in seeing this motel, preserved like a fly trapped forever in yellow amber, that he'd been ignoring basic safety. Like keeping his eyes open.

Finnegan was correct. The thick dust on the blacktop was overlaid with the familiar tracks of the swampwags. He knelt down to run his fingers lightly over the marks, then stood and scrutinized them from a different angle. He walked a few paces toward the imposing bulk of the motel, looking back at the tracks.

"They all turned here, J.B.," he said. "They come this far, then they go right around and head back toward the main part of the ville."

"Yeah. I read it that way."

"Mebbe this Holiday Inn place marks the edge of Baron Tourment's secure territory."

Ryan looked at Krysty. "Could be, lover. This gang runs part of West Lowellton. This baron maybe hasn't enough sec men to come clear out the nest of rats." That made sense.

They could imagine no other reason why the tire tracks should stop so abruptly about a hundred paces before the tangled skein of waterways and narrow bridges that circled the building.

From the south came the sullen rumbling of thunder. A deep purple cloud moved menacingly along the southern fringe of the sky, its upper edge touched with vermilion.

"Nuke storm on the way," said Finn.

"No," said Doc.

"What?"

"Not a nuke storm. I spent a summer here, way back in... my mind sort of trembles when I try and recall dates and places. I spent a vacation with Emily... Was that her name? Emily?"

Only once since Ryan Cawdor had met Doc Tanner had the old man mentioned Emily. It was just another ill-shaped piece in the jigsaw puzzle of the man's mysterious past.

"Go on, Doc," urged Lori. "Please."

"It was out near Baton Rouge. Rained, so we got busted flat, roads turned to rivers. Dark at noon, so's you couldn't see a hand before your face. Lord, but that was a time. Emily cried on my shoulder, and she lost her kerchief that day. Lace-trimmed. Sky like this. But there was a pool of clear gold light, straight over our heads Ч we saw it. Looking up, like a road to the throne of the Lord Himself. Emily wasn't much on religion.... She... seen an eagle in that light."

The voice was fading, as it often, did during Doc's recollections. This one had gone on longer than most. Ryan prompted him gently.

"And the sky was like that? Purple and red at the edges?"

"All around. This eagle. Emily... was it with her? Or later, after I'd... they trawled and... I recall a line or two of verse by..." The brow furrowed with the effort of concentration. "By Oliver Makin. 'The bird that flies above the clouds knows only the sun, and his storms are sun-storms'. Yes, that was it, I believe. I always thought that a pretty conceit. I'm sorry, I fail to remember why..."

Lori squeezed his hand. Ryan was struck by the way Doc Tanner mixed moments of the highest intelligence with long hours of near senile meanderings.

"So, it's not a fucking nuke storm," said Finn. "Least that's good news. But it still looks like the skies are going to fucking piss all over us."

"Best get inside the building," said Ryan. "I'll go first. J.B.?"

"Yeah?"

"Bring up..."

"The rear. I got it, Ryan."

The relics of several automobiles were parked in the overgrown lot at the side of the building. Over the main doorway there was a kind of archway. Beyond it was a pair of double doors, one with the glass cracked clean across from corner to corner. Ryan, the G-12 at the ready, stepped lightly toward the entrance, sniffing the air like a prowling panther. The green scent of the luxurious vegetation filled his nostrils.

"Should we go in, Ryan?" asked Finnegan.

"Fireblast! Why not?"

The door was stiff, creaking on dry hinges. Ryan kicked away a pile of desiccated leaves heaped in the entrance; they rustled loudly. With the sun behind them, the group filed through the door one by one into the cool dark vestibule; the air felt almost clammy on the skin. Last to enter, J.B. pulled the door shut.

"Shall I stay here and cover our asses?"

"No. If'n there's hunters after us, this place is too big to cover until we've checked it out. Safer to keep together."

The Armorer nodded.

"Be quicker if we split up," suggested Finn. "Mebbe me, J.B., Doc 'n' Lori could go one way, you 'n' Krysty go the other, and meet up back here in the... what the fuck is this big room?"

"Called the lobby, my dear Mr. Finnegan," replied Doc Tanner. "By the three Kennedys! This place brings back such a flood of memories."

"Tell us 'bout them, Doc," said Ryan, but the old man was already going on ahead, pushing through a second set of glass doors, with ornate brass handles shaped like the heads of twining alligators.

The rest of the group followed him into the cavernous lobby. It was a place of deep and swimming shadows, with large chairs and sofas set about circular tables. The walls had paintings of the bayous, streaked with dark and light greens. To one side was a long desk marked Registration; across the lobby two passages led off to the left and to the right. The one on the left carried a sign in a sinuous gold script: Cajuns' Bar & Atchafalaya Dining.

Ryan inhaled deeply, tasting the old, old dust, stale and flat. He closed his eyes and licked his dry lips, savoring the feeling of being inside a creature dead a hundred years. It was a feeling he had known before, when he and the Trader had first discovered the sealed entrances to a redoubt, locked away since before the big winter. But this was different. This was not an arid military storehouse but something that had lived and bustled with activity.

"Okay, Finn. Krysty and me'll go left. Rest of you go right. Meet back here in..." he glanced down at his chron, "...in 'bout an hour. Watch your triggers. Don't want to chill each other."

Their boot heels muffled by the thick pile carpets, four of them went cautiously off, vanishing around a corner. Ryan turned and grinned wolfishly at Krysty, noticing that her long scarlet hair was shimmering and moving gently on its own, though there was no draft to stir it.

"Hear anything? Feel anything?" he asked.

"Just a lot of love for you," she whispered, her voice almost vanishing before it reached him.

"Nothing living?"

She shook her head slowly. "Smell reminds me of how Mother Sonja used to take out our winter clothes, back in Harmony. She'd open up the closets that had been shut tight all summer, and the smell... it was kind of like this. Dry and musty."

Ryan walked to the long desk. There was a notice neatly printed on a board. "Jerry Suster call home soonest." Under it, hastily chalked, was the single word: "No-show."

The place showed every sign of a rapid and disorganized withdrawal, with clipboards, pens, cards and small change scattered everywhere. At the far end of the desk Krysty found a round metal drum, with a printed label behind clear plastic. "How far to your next Holiday Inn destination? Allow us to make your reservation."

"See how far we come from Alaska," said Ryan.

Krysty flipped open a slot on the front of the drum, revealing hundreds of alphabetically arranged rectangular cards. As she began to turn the drum, the cards quivered and began to collapse into tiny shards of dry paper, disintegrating in her fingers. "By Gaia!" she exclaimed. "All rotted away."

"Figure there'll be a lot of that. We found that natural materials like wool and cotton all rot in a few years, and artificial materials like plastic last longer."

УLook.Ф She pointed to a rack of colored cards with shiny, laminated faces, hanging on the wall.

They carefully inspected the curling pieces, feeling how brittle and fragile they were, like some ancient manuscript discovered in a cave. These were brochures that described tourists attractions within a reasonable drive from the motel. Ryan had actually heard of some of them, like Disney World and Epcot. Many featured smiling families on holiday, wearing bright shirts and shorts.

УBayou buggy trips,Ф said Krysty. УIn swampwags.Ф

Another card showed some caves, eerie and dank, with an official of some sort in a buff uniform and wide brimmed hat pointing out a massive stalactite. УTuckaluckahoochy Caverns, only thirty miles from Lafayette, first discovered in 1996,Ф read the caption.

УMebbe food in the kitchens,Ф suggested Ryan. УWe found lots still usable. IfТn its tinned or freeze-sealed, its edible.Ф

They found a corpse in the Atchafalaya Dining Room.

Sinews of gristle still held most of the skeleton together. It sat at a table near the door, the skull rolled forward, resting against an overturned green bottle. The left leg had become detached, and the left are was loose, the fingers stiffly penetrating the maroon carpet. The right arm was on the table, the calcified fingers clutching a shot glass with a dried brown smear at its bottom. There was nothing apparent to indicate how the person had died.

A long plastic-coated menu rested against a glass candlestick, and Krysty picked it up. Angling it to catch what little light there was, she showed it to Ryan.

" 'A prime rib of beef, one of our forever and a day favorites, with choice of rice or potato, our crisp'n fresh house salad, bakery rolls and whipped butter.' Sound good, lover? Guess I'll have that. Or maybe, 'the shrimp platter, out of the bay yesterday, served with toasted almonds and pineapple rings.'"

Ryan looked over her shoulder. "I'll take the deep-fried breaded cheese sticks for a starter, or the egg rolls and mustard sauce. The chef's salad with... what the fuck's a julienne of ham? And what are olives? Never heard of 'em. A stuffed flounder and crab meat stuffing. Heard of a crab but not a flounder."

"It's a fish, I think."

"Right now I'd settle for anything."

"How 'bout bird shit on rye?" asked Krysty.

"Sure. As long as it's goodbird shit."

"Let's go look in the kitchen."

They couldn't believe their luck in the back. Right by the bat-wing doors was an open closet door. Inside, a dozen hand-torches hung, on hooks next to a push-button power pack, Ryan pressed the red switch a few times, and the bulbs began to glow, brighter and brighter.

"Solves a problem. Take one, and we can come back for the others."

The torches threw a bright narrow beam that lasted about ten minutes before needing recharging. The light was reflected off the polished metal of pots and pans sitting neatly in racks. The shelves at the far end of the kitchen were stacked with all kinds of tins and packets. Krysty let her light explore them.

"The packets have probably gone off, but there's plenty of tins. Ready meals in sealed cartons. Gumbo... what's that?" She peered at the label. "Oh, yeah. Freeze-dried collard greens, fatback and chili. Irradiated and reconstituted pulk salad. Sounds like enough. What d'you say, lover?"

Ryan shone the torch on his own face, the harsh beam highlighting the sharp contours of his cheeks and mouth. "Don't you see my tongue hanging out? We'll look round some, then meet up with the others. Bring a spare light with you."

Many of the drapes were still drawn, letting in only a murky, filtered sunlight. Here and there doors to rooms stood open, with sharp-edged bars of brightness thrown across the corridors.

"Why the dead not smell? Quint chilled the dead. Some days he did not, and the dead smell." Lori wrinkled up her nose in disgust at the memory.

"Too long a time has passed, dearest," replied Doc Tanner. "The flesh rots slowly, and mortifies. Gradually it all dries, and the maggots feed on it. After a few years slip by, there is nothing left for the maggots, and they too die and rot slowly and very quietly the corpse becomes sinew and bone. Nothing else remains. Nothing to smell anymore."

"Guess for a few weeks West Lowellton sure must have fucking stank like a summer slaughterhouse," added the sweating Finnegan.

J. B. Dix, hefting the Mini-Uzi, stepped into one of the rooms on the right of the corridor. The drapes were half open, and the waves of light illuminated countless motes of dust suspended in the air. Beyond the window, greenery was pressed against the glass. In a corner, termites had evidently worked their way in, destroying some wood at floor level.

He looked around. Two double beds, huge by comparison with all the other beds the Armorer had ever seen. It looked like neither of them had been used, the covers as tight and square as when they had last been made up in January 2001, probably by some Puerto Rican maid. There were lights mounted on the wall above each bed, and a painting of a cowboy riding a spirited Appaloosa stallion. A low bureau faced the beds, with a polished black vid set upon it. A round table with two chairs in dark plastic hide stood against the window in an ugly little grouping with a spidery lamp. J.B. walked over the carpet, breathing slow and easy, seeing his reflection approach a massive mirror screwed over a washbasin in pastel pink. Glancing around to make sure the others hadn't followed him in, the Armorer winked at himself and tipped his fedora. There was a long pink bath and a pink toilet, sealed in some kind of clear plastic. A small label pasted to it read, "Sanitized for your protection". Beneath it the water was long gone.

Drinking glasses on the basin were also sealed tight. J.B. reached over and turned one of the chromed taps, not surprised to see that nothing happened. No leaking drops of rusty water. No hissing and gurgling in the pipes. No skittering insects.

"J.B., come look in here!"

Quick and light as a cat, the Armorer darted across the corridor. Finn was in the doorway of an identical room, with Lori and Doc at his elbow.

"What?"

"Couple of chills. In the bed."

J.B. stepped past him, his eyes surveying the place. The thick shades were down almost to the bottom, letting in little light. But there was enough to see the two leering skeletons in the bed on the right. There were a couple of open valises on the floor and several empty bottles on the table, two glasses next to them.

Doc pushed past the Armorer, straight to the smaller table at the head of the bed. He picked up a white plastic container and shook it to show it was empty. Peering at the label, he replaced it where it was.

"What is it?" asked Lori.

"Morphine derivative. Very strong sleeping tablets. There were some fifty or so, I would hazard a guess. Now there are none."

"They chilled themselves?"

"Yes."

Finnegan whistled. "I can't ever figure someone doing that."

The old man patted him gently on the shoulder. "That is a sad comment on the times in which we live and the life that you must lead, my dear young friend. You must be aware that when civilization ended, it was not utterly unexpected. There was a time of warning for some. Only for some."

"Some ran," said J.B.

"One day, Mr. Dix, I shall entertain you with the tale of the man who had an appointment in Samarra. You can run faster than the wind, but Death will always o'ertake you. These two had warning, and they chose to die together, in each other's arms, perhaps with some good corn liquor to warm their passing. It was a more dignified departure from life than many enjoyed."

"That is sad," Lori said quietly.

"Yeah. Let's leave 'em," agreed Finnegan, leading them out of the suite of death.

Ryan and Krysty found bodies in half a dozen rooms in the Holiday Inn of West Lowellton. Most were in the beds.

Not all.

One skeleton was in the bathtub. The pale pearlized sides were streaked with clotted black marks, thick around the top. In the bottom, almost hidden by the slumped pelvis, was a slim razor blade, its edges dulled with the long-dried blood. The skull hung forward, drooping in a final disconsolate slump. Shreds of long gray hair were still pasted to the ridges of the head.

The right hand, which had been dangling outside the tub, had become detached and lay in an untidy heap of carpals and phalanges on top of an open book.

"What is it?" asked Ryan.

Krysty stooped to pick it up, keeping her finger between the open pages. "The Bible. Whoever it was got in a warm tub and opened up his or her veins. Uncle Tyas McNann told me it was how the old Greeks and Romans used to take their lives."

"What chapter was he or she reading?"

Krysty examined the heading that the dead fingers had marked, stumbling over some of the unfamiliar language. "It's from the New Testament Ч the First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians."

"Who were they?"

"Some old Romans or Greeks, I guess, lover. It's open at chapter thirteen."

"Read a little, Krysty."

The girl began, her voice rising with the mouth-filling phrases of the King James text. "But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly."

She stopped there, turning her face to his, and he saw the tears streaking her cheeks. "One day, Krysty..." he said.

They met up again in the lobby about half an hour later. All were subdued by the macabre experience of touring the luxurious mausoleum. Lori had been crying, and Doc Tanner was showing worrisome signs of retreating once more into a catatonic madness. His eyes had become hooded, as if they'd been painted with a thin veil of beeswax. Occasionally he would mutter. "Madness," or "Oh, the horror of it all... The bastards! Insane, criminal bastards!"

Ryan took them to the kitchen, gave everyone a torch and showed them how to prime them with the pushbutton. He and Finn and J.B. took a spare light to hang on their belts. He and Krysty also showed everyone the supplies of food.

It seemed like there'd be no way of heating anything up, but Finn went fossicking around the storage closets, emerging with a red cylinder of camping gas. Lori teetered off and brought in pans of discolored water from the streams around the motel, heating them and tipping in the unappetizing powders, stirring them to form a bland thick soup. Krysty added some salt and pepper from the metal condiment containers on the tables in the Atchafalaya Dining Room.

Finnegan disappeared through the heavy doors of the Cajuns' Bar, which were covered with shreds of rotted maroon velvet. He returned with a dozen bottles in his arms.

They sat and drank, mostly in silence. Some of the wine was still drinkable, despite having stood untouched on shelves for almost a century. Best was a couple of quarts of imported French brandy, thick and sweet, to be savored on the palate, with a fiery kick that didn't register properly until it was well down the throat.

"Bar was filled with bones. Must have been the best parts of ten to fifteen people all jumbled in the joint. Some was women. Remains of some fancy shoes in among the ribs and skulls."

Ryan stopped spooning up the reconstituted mush to look at the chubby gunman. "What's that, Finn? Bones all jumbled up?"

"Yeah."

"Then someone had been in that part?" Finnegan considered the question, belched and took another sip of the brandy. "Got to be right. Fucking right, Ryan. Only place in this gaudy that the chills had been moved at all. Yeah. Looked like bottles were gone. Gaps on shelves."

It was late afternoon.

The sun that had shone so boldly through the morning had vanished, drifting away under a leaden-gray cloud cover.

Through chinks in the faded drapes, the lights from the torches flickered and danced. They could be seen outside, across the waterways.

They could be seen by the crouching figure in ragged leather breeches and jerkin. A figure with eyes like fire and hair white as snow.