Neutron Solstice

Chapter Twenty-One

Jak Lauren wasn't keen on their going out so soon before the attack. His hair flowed about his shoulders as he gesticulated, waving his hands.

"What the fuck you want to do this? We got maps. You know where the ville is. We'll be with you. Fucking stay here."

Ryan shook his head. "No. IfТn you fear us going to tray you to Tourment, we're leaving Finn and Doc here with you. If we go to fight with you, we want to see what we can first. Be back in good time. It's only seven now. Our plans are to leave here at eleven, so we'll be back by then, three hours from now. I want to go and look at what we're tackling."

"Too late to change plans," said the boy, almost reproachfully.

"Why change 'em?" asked J.B. "Fine as they are. Just fine."

Ryan and J.B. each carried one of the hand-torches from the Holiday Inn on their belts, as well as their usual armaments. The weather was calm, the air still. Jak opened the maps one more time, showing them where and where not to walk. He pointed out swamps that had risen over old highways or trails that were patrolled by the Baron's sec men. Both men listened carefully, committing the information to memory.

"Come back safe," said the boy, patting them both on the shoulder as they left the lobby of the old vid-house. Ryan half grinned, still finding it hard to believe that this war-leader was a lad of just fourteen.

In some ways the recce was abortive. They found their way along the abandoned suburban streets, past the entrance to a massive shopping mall, taking the route that the albino kid had shown them. A couple of times they were startled by animals Ч once by a massive armadillo, with its family in tow, crossing the blacktop in front of them. Another time they never saw the creature, but they heard it moving through high brush at the back of some houses. They stopped where they were and waited for it to pass.

Eventually they managed to get within sight of the Best Western Snowy Egret, but the area was crawling with sec patrols, moving in groups of five or six, using generator-powered searchlights that cut through the night, making it impossible to approach within a hundred yards.

"Have to take them out first thing," said J.B. as they crouched in a grove of whitebeams on the edges of a large derelict mansion.

"Easy with this." Ryan patted the butt of the G-12 with its bulky night sight. "Soon as we open up, they'll know what's going down."

"If the plan works, they won't have time to do nothing 'bout it."

Ryan peered at the front of the big building. "No gates." He was about to crawl back when his eye was caught by something. "Fireblast!"

"What?"

"There. That pole."

J.B. followed his pointing finger, finally, making out the tall metal bar rising vertically in front of the motel. The lights were dazzling, and it was some seconds before his eyes adjusted to lake in what it was that dangled from a rope some thirty feet in the air. "Man or woman?" he whispered.

Ryan had brought a small, powerful pair of night glasses with him, and be reached from them, his heart sinking. It was undeniably a naked corpse. The rope was knotted around its neck, but the lamps threw it into a sharp contrast of brightness and shadow, making it hard to see it clearly.

He focused the glasses, taking a deep breath to hold them steady. "Bastard," he breathed.

"Not one of the women?"

"No, J.B., it's not Krysty or Lori. It's a man up there."

"But it looks like there's no..."

"Yeah. That's right, friend. It's been castrated. And there's no hands neither. And no feet."

"The bastards! Like some dirt-crazies, that shrink heads or take hair."

"The eyes, nose and ears are gone, as well."

"Who do?.."

"Looks like an old man. Could be past fifty. I reckon it's the lad's father."

"Whitey's old man?" This was the nickname that Ryan had given him. "Yeah. That would, figure what we know of this baron."

Ryan pocketed the binoculars. "Let's go. Tell the kid what we've seen."

He wriggled away, with J.B. at his heels, ready to return to the old cinema.

They were about halfway back when they heard boot-heels ringing on the overgrown, gravel road. Ryan hesitated only a second before pointing to the left, then dived over a rotting picket fence and moved quickly along the side of a trim little house. He felt J.B. at his back and stopped once they were both safely around the corner.

"Wait," he whispered, peering toward the street. Six men, making up the sec patrol, were marching toward their base. Most of them were smoking and carried M-16s slung across their chests. Ryan's keen nostrils caught the unmistakable aroma of maryjane drifting over the weed-infested garden. The sound of their footsteps vanished away down the road, and Ryan and J.B. were able to relax again.

"Could have took them," said the Armorer, easing his finger off the trigger of his Mini-Uzi. "Hit 'em all in one burst."

"They'd have heard it and figured it was the start of the attack. This Tourment may be the meanest fucker in the land, but he can't be a total stupe. He'll know we might come after the women. No point giving him any warning."

J.B. nodded. "Guess so. Let's move."

"Wait."

"What now, Ryan? You don't want to take a leak, do you? Trader always said when you first joined you was always sneaking off to take a piss before the shooting started. That it?"

"No. What the fuck's that there? In the middle of the garden, by that dead rosebush?"

It was a metallic dome that rose about three feet above the matted surface of what had once been a neatly trimmed lawn, now overrun with crabgrass. Ryan picked his way through the knee-high weeds, then bent over the strange protuberance.

"What's your guess? We could do with Doc here. That old bastard knows more about the times before the long winters than any man does. Or should."

"Small redoubt?" guessed J.B., tapping on the top with the butt of his blaster.

"Private one. Wait. Didn't you once tell me 'bout the last years, when folks installed their own nuke shelters. This could be one, still here."

The Armorer set his weight against a large wheel set in the top, but it didn't budge. "Bolted."

"Yeah. But look at the rust round it. Might go if'n we both give it a try together. Come on. Heave on three. One, two, three!"

There was a brittle snap as corroded metal gave up its resistance. The wheel then turned fairly easily, with a thin grating sound that made Ryan look behind him. "Check the road. I'll come get you when it's open."

It took thirty or more turns before Ryan heard a latch disengage, and he was able to lift the trap. It was enormously thick, obviously counterbalanced by weights; it opened with a clunk. There was a faint hissing, and a waft of overpoweringly stale air, so dry and sour that it almost seemed to Ryan to clutch at his throat, like a hundred-year-old wraith.

J.B. joined him as he flashed his torch into the entrance. They saw a tunnel that dropped vertically about thirty feet, with a white-painted set of ladders, its rungs throwing sharp shadows.

"Going in, Ryan?"

"We got time. I'd kind of like to see inside one of these places."

He went first, slinging his H&K caseless over his shoulder. It was obvious that the shelter hadn't been opened for a century. It was probably one of the few totally safe places in all of Deathlands.

There was a door at the bottom, with a simple catch on it. Stuck to it with contact adhesive was a flowery notice. It said: "Don 'n' Peggy's place. If you got no beer, you can't come in."

A smaller card said: "This is the golden door that has a silver lining."

The shelter was small and cramped, with a living space opening to a couple of bunks. There was a kitchen area and toilet and washbasin. Beyond that was another door that hid the controls, generator, air purifier, water recycler and stores.

Ryan saw the two corpses immediately.

Unlike those above ground, these hadn't deteriorated into skeletons. They were mummified bodies, leathery lips peeled back off yellowed teeth. The skin had shrunk and tightened across the faces, showing the skulls that lay beneath.

The woman, with long black hair, lay on one of the bunks, looking as though she'd been laid out in a funeral home. The skeletal hands were folded neatly on her shrunken breasts. She wore pale blue dungarees, stained and filthy, with a black and white badge pinned to the shoulder strap. Both J.B. and Ryan recognized it from old books as the emblem of a society that opposed all forms of nuke growth.

"Didn't do her no good," said J.B., his voice flat and muffled in the cramped metal tomb.

The man's body was in the John, huddled over the chemical toilet-bowl, almost as if he was at prayer.

"Looks like he died puking," commented Ryan.

There was plenty of food in tins. J.B. switched on the water purifier and found it still functioned. Ryan sat down on a canvas chair, looked around the shelter and saw a primitive vid-machine, with a camera wired to it. He pressed the button marked Battery, and a faint red light glowed on the display, as if some tiny hibernating creature had just been awakened. "It works, J.B. Ч it works."

He wasn't totally surprised. In some of the better-protected redoubts that they'd found during the years with the Trader, they'd quite often come across battery-operated machinery that still functioned. But generally the charge was only held for a few minutes, and then the equipment would grind to a halt forever.

"Press the On button on the telly there."

J.B. hit the starter, and the screen lightened, revealing a jagged pattern of gray and white. Ryan had already noticed that there was a reel sitting in the vid-machine. He leaned forward and pressed the control to set it in motion.

"You don't think there's..." The voice of the Armorer faded away into a stillness that verged on awe.

The jagged dashes and dots changed to colored splashes and streaks. The speaker crackled, and then they heard the sound of music.

"Testing, five and four and three. Coming through real good. Just turn off my new Pogues compact. There." The music ceased.

Suddenly something appeared on the screen, a great blurred outline, like a football. It vanished, and then they saw the head and shoulders of a man who sat in the same chair where Ryan now sat. He looked to be around fifty years of age, with thinning black hair and a small neat mustache. He had plump, well-shaved cheeks and immaculate teeth. Teeth so good they couldn't possibly have been genuine. He wore a bright shirt, decorated with garish bananas and pineapples. On his right hand was a ruby fraternity ring and on his wrist a platinum Rolex watch.

"Hi there to the future." There was a sheepish grin on his face, and he seemed a little embarrassed at his own presentation. "My name's Donald Haggard, and I'm an optometrist here in West Lowellton, part of the great city of Lafayette in the great state of Louisiana. Don't know rightly why I'm telling you this, because I guess you'll know all that. I've just broken off from Christmas brunch to tell you a little 'bout... Guess I damned near forgot to tell you the date. It's December 25, in the year 2000. Wanted to make this here vid as a kinda record, I guess, of what's going on here right now."

While Ryan and J.B. sat there, spellbound by this message from a dead man, Don Haggard went on to outline the political situation. The tensions between East and West, the problems in Libya, in South Africa, in the Philippines, in Cuba. In the northern cities of Great Britain and in Israel.

"Seems like the whole world is just waiting for someone to push the first button."

He talked a little about his wife, Peggy, who worked locally in telephone sales, and their three sons, Johnny, Dwight and Merle.

"Guess you know from that what kind of music I'm into," he guffawed. J.B. and Ryan looked at each other blankly.

The picture wobbled, and the gears of the vid-machine grated and whined as if they were about to give up. Ryan leaned in the chair and pressed the Fast Forward button, letting it go ahead for several seconds.

"Don't have time to watch all this, J.B.," he said. "Mebbe take it with us."

"Stop it here."

Don was back, looking rather less cool and in control than he had on Christmas Day. "Things don't," he began. "Sorry. Start with date. It's January 15, 2001. Yeah. Government tells us not to worry. Motherfuckers. Not to worry. They don't live out in the open. They've got their bunkers and hideouts. Me an' Peggy'll be fine. What about them good old boys of ours? Where do they go? Can't come in here. Built for two. Jesus on the fucking cross, what a mess!"

"Can't have been a big magnetic pulse in the skies round here," commented J.B. "Would have cut off all the electrics."

Haggard rambled on a while longer, cursing the politicians, both Russian and American, for letting things slide to the brink of war.

Ryan ran the tape farther forward, watching the dancing picture and halting it when there was an obvious change of time.

"January 24." Looking'at his watch, Don went on. "Late morning, I think. Watch stopped. Guess it's around ten-thirty. Peggy's worse, crying and throwing up and taking on so."

Don looked terrible. His shirt was stained and dirty, and he was pale and unshaven. His eyes were sunken, and he had obviously been weeping. "I'm real fine, folks. Whoever you are. Felt the bangs again a day back. Last night, maybe. Not sure. Bet I'm real fine and so's Peggy. Just a mite sickly. See my hand shaking some. Should have stocked up on liquor, Never thought 'bout that when I built this place. Saved our lives, I guess. Can't tell for sure. Haven't been up top. Won't yet."

J.B, walked across the room and removed a knife from a neat mounting on the wall. "Tekna." He held it up, showing Ryan the five holes in the hilt and the distinctive double sawing edge. "Surgical steel with a high chrome content. Haven't seen one in years. I'll take it." Sheathing it, he hooked it on his belt.

Ryan pushed the Fast Forward control, stopping it when the man's head vanished in a blur of visual static. He glanced at his chron again, seeing they still had a little time. To watch this film was even more amazing than being in a vid-house or a Holiday Inn. Seeing this vid was to witness the beginning of the long winters, as it was happening. The neutron bombs had fallen, infecting everyone with a lethal burst of nuke energy.

"Twenty-fifth January. Air filter doesn't fucking work properly 'gainst what the Reds dosed us with. I can feel it rotting my fucking bones. Peggy's worse. I'm going up top to see one time. If anyone ever sees this, you'll know what it's like."

The camera showed the walls of the tunnel and angled shots of the ladder as Haggard carried it up. He panted and sighed, stopping a couple of times to gather breath. Then there was a break, presumably while he cautiously opened the hatch and peered out. The next shot was in his garden, the man providing his own commentary on what they were seeing.

"Lotsa smoke all round. Looks like there's houses fired toward 'fayette. Our house is standing good."

Wobbling and jerking as Haggard carried the camera with him, shooting as he went, the film showed a murky scene, poorly lit on account of the smoke drifting by. At first it didn't seem the holocaust that Ryan and J.B. knew it to have been.

Then it began.

The commentary began to stammer and fade, sinking to a spasmodic muttering that identified people here and there. It finally faded to silence, and the sound track only picked up a low keening, with a piercing scream intermittently shattering the quiet.

The land was a massive enamel house. A land that was filled only with the dead and the dying. A high wind whipped clouds across the sky, which seemed to be a dark purple, like braised flesh. Wherever the lens probed, there was death. Young and old, frail and hale, all felled by the same single swipe of the nuclear scythe. The nuking had been cunning and selective, hitting only creatures that breathed, sparing all the buildings.

"Tom Adey and his young kid... Beulah and her gran... little Melanie and her folks... Pop Maczyzk... new married couple moved into the Wainwright place last week."

Dead and dying.

On porches and in the road. One body hung out of a burned car, the head, arms and upper torso untouched by the flames; the lower torso and the legs were charred and blackened; the mouth was open in a soundless scream of ultimate agony.

Dogs crawled along the sidewalk, snapping at their own hind paws, eyes rolling, tongues hanging from their jaws. A wheelchair was caught by the vid camera, tipped on one side, wheels slowly rotating in the wind, its occupant vanished.

The camera swung wildly through 180 degrees, pointing at the ground, its shots very jerky and fast.

"He's heading back here," said Ryan. "Had enough. Poor fucker can't take any more of what happened to his neighborhood."

The picture went blank, and J.B. moved toward the television, thinking it was over. But it wasn't.

Not quite.

A face swam into approximate focus. The face of a mortally ill, dying man, still recognizable as Don Haggard, but drawn and yellow and thin. Dark seams furrowed his face from his hose to the corners of his mouth, and the eyes were veiled with a dreadful fatigue. He wore a plaid shirt that was moist with vomit and what looked like drying blood.

The voice was hoarse and labored. The tape ran on with long pauses as the man seemed to fight to remember how to speak.

"Donald Haggard here of West Lowellton. Don't know the date no more. Been six days since Peg passed away. Poor old dear been sleeping more and finally slipped from me while I slept. I got the sickness like everyone. Been shitting so much I can't keep me clean no more. Lost all my dignity. Puked blood today. Can't be soon 'fore I join my darling. Guess our boys are long dead. Hope they died quicker and easier than folks round here. Conceived in fucking liberty... We can't hallow or consecrate this ground..." He was overtaken by a coughing fit, his body shaking. "Last full measure of devotion... It shall not perish from the earth. No, no, no."

"Turn it off, J.B.," said Ryan.

Don Haggard's voice was weakening. "Heard knocking a whiles back, but I couldn't... wouldn't have... not going out again." The man staggered to his feet, swaying to and fro, pointing a finger at the camera. "Do you feel fucking lucky, punk?" he said, to the bewilderment of two people a century later.

That was the last he said.

Then there was the noise of someone being violently sick Ч a choking, tearing sound that went on and on until J.B. pushed the Fast Forward button again. Don Haggard never reappeared, though the tape ran right on through to its end and automatically rewound itself.

"Going to take it?" asked the Armorer.

"No. Like robbing a grave. Not right. Leave it here."

They switched off everything, gently pulling the door shut and climbing out into the cool of the late evening. Ryan lowered the exit hatch, swinging the wheel-lock on it, making sure that no casual predator would disturb the last resting place of Don and Peggy Haggard of West Lowellton, Louisiana.

They returned to the Adelphi Cinema without incident and rejoined Jak Lauren in good time for the last fire-fight.