James Axler - Deathlands 43 - Dark Emblem Read online

  The gun had two barrels and an adjustable hammer, firing a single.63-caliber round like a shotgun, and nine.44-caliber rounds in revolver mode. Finding ammo for the grapefruit scattergun round was extremely difficult, but the old man refused to give up the sometimes clumsy blaster for a more modern weapon.

  "Once a man is set in his ways, there is no reason to change unless absolutely, positively necessary,"

  Doc often intoned. "And I have no intention of attempting to reinvent myself now."

  Doc was a living link to the past that stretched back even farther than Mildred Wyeth's. The old man had been born in South Strafford, Vermont, on February 14, 1868. Twenty-eight years later, he'd been time-trawled via a modified matter-transfer chronal unit to the year 1998, an unwitting subject in an experiment of the future. Two years after that, at the flash point of the millennium in the year 2000, he'd been thrust forward more than a hundred years into the unknown, the future, the after-the-holocaust world of Deathlands.

  Doc stumbled, the heavy blaster weighing heavily on his thin frame. He used his swordstick to break his fall, even as a steadying hand came from behind courtesy of Krysty Wroth.

  "My thanks, Child," Doc said absently. "This rubble-strewed hall is hell on two-legged locomotion."

  "Don't mention it," she replied easily. She was ready to fall asleep on her feet herself, so she could only imagine how Doc was feeling. Even her usually sentient red hair was drooping, hiding the fact that besides being a stunningly beautiful woman, Krysty was also a mutant. Her abilities were masked, not overt like the sucker-lined hands and tongues of the stickies or the crumbling flesh of the scalies.

  Powers of the mind. That's what the tall redhead possessed, the knack of being able to sense the presence of other intelligent life-forms and also, if said life-forms were friend or foe. She was able to smell trouble when it was coming toward them, able to know good from evil, right from wrong, black from white.

  She also had power deep from within. Taught by Mother Sonja, back during her childhood in Harmony to call upon and wield the near-mystic force of Gaia, the Earth Mother, Krysty could channel the very energy of the planet itself using her body as a vessel.

  Such an act infused her with incredible strength, along with heightened awareness, but only for a short time. While the world seemed to slow to a crawl to her enhanced eyes, she would move at triple speed. Immersion within Gaia's forces took a terrific toll on her physical and mental well-being. Remaining in the trance too long, she would ultimately lose her soul, and her earthly shell would literally burn out.

  The price she paid for summoning this power was dreadful and always left her exhausted and drained for hours-sometimes days-after the fury of the Earth Mother had raced through her. In the aftermath, she was as weak and helpless as a newborn.

  A striking beauty, Krysty possessed flawlessly pale alabaster skin. When combined with the sparkling emerald of her eyes and the passionate fire of her long red hair, it added to her already considerable presence.

  Dean Cawdor was behind Krysty. Like his father, the youth shared the same dark complexion and black, curly hair. In many ways, he was a perfect

  Ryan Cawdor in miniature. Perhaps he wouldn't be as tall as Ryan or possess his imposing presence, but he shared his sire's innate intelligence and sense of morality and fair play.

  Ryan had committed some ruthless acts in his younger days and done some things he knew would assure him of his own private chamber in whatever purgatory he eventually ended up serving after his death, but that was yesterday, this was now, and he was doing his damnedest to live free and in the present.

  A combination of Krysty's and Dean's influence had seen to that.

  The back of the line of friends creeping down the rubble-strewed hallways was brought up by a man even smaller than J. B. Dix. Not even a man, really, if manhood was determined by chronological age. The youth was sixteen years old, five feet four inches tall, and might've weighed one hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. His face was shockingly white-not flesh tone, but ghost pale, with numerous scars on the chin and cheeks.

  At first glance, no one saw the scars. They were too busy peering at Jak's eyes, which were a blood-red crimson, twin rubies set in a grim visage, fringed by bangs of pure white hair. The long mane cascaded across his narrow shoulders like a waterfall.

  Hidden on his person, Jak had several leaf-bladed throwing knives, their hilts taped for perfect balance. The style of leather and camou-canvas jacket he'd favored and worn for so long had tiny shards of ra- zored steel sewn into the lining and sleeves, strategically torn in the most easy-to-reach places.

  The young albino didn't need to worry about using a blaster when he had access to his knives, but a heavy, well-used and well-maintained Colt Python was fastened to one of his skinny legs. Just in case.

  So many weapons-a necessary evil in the Death-lands. Ryan didn't share J.B.'s burning fascination with hardware. His own personal arsenal was simple and neat. A 9 mm SIG-Sauer P-226 pistol was at his side, bolstered and safe. The blaster held fifteen full-metal-jacketed bullets and came with a built-in baffle silencer. Over one shoulder, Ryan had looped his walnut-stocked Steyr SSG-70 bolt-action rifle, which fired ten 7.62 mm rounds and came with a laser image-enhancer and a Starlite night scope.

  Ryan also had two bladed weapons, a large eigh-teen-inch panga strapped to his left hip, and a flensing knife hidden away at the small of his back. Various auto-loads and other clips of ammunition, along with a talent for the archaic art of hand-to-hand combat, made Ryan a dangerous two-legged killing machine.

  Unlike many of the other hardmen of the Death-lands, Ryan Cawdor was also a thinking man, with a capacity for compassion, if allowed by his foes to grant such gifts.

  Rarely was he given such an option.

  "We going up?" Dean asked, looking into the dimness of the open stairwell.

  "Yeah," his father replied. "Krysty, grab that torch over there."

  The woman complied, hefting the canvas-tipped piece of wood into the air. "Still got some life in it, I think," she said. "Must've been left behind when those stickies were down here before."

  J.B. stubbed out the end of the cigar and placed it in a pocket, then used the lighter to ignite the end of the stick, proving the crusty torch indeed still worked.

  "Okay, let's go."

  Ryan took the point, followed by the others. Krysty was close to Ryan and J.B., shining the light up into the dark for a long span of minutes, until a new presence joined them unexpectedly on the winding staircase.

  "Fresssssh meat!" a wet voice snarled as Krysty's left arm was bent painfully back and the makeshift torch was snatched from her hand. Red embers flew as the lighted head of the stolen torch was shoved into a cloth bag, and instantly the world of the hospital stairwell went black.

  Doc cried out briefly in the darkness, then was lost in the new images that seemed to swirl out of the night of forgetfulness and come alive in his mind, taking him back to another time.

  Chicago, Illinois Redoubt, 1998

  As A SLENDER YOUNG MAN Theophilus Algernon Tanner had spent many a lazy summer afternoon swimming in the nearby Connecticut River to escape the surprisingly damnable Vermont heat. The summer of his twelfth birthday was humid and sticky and made one almost yearn for the subzero cold snaps of the long winter months. Never much for active sport or physical activity, the boy did enjoy spending hours in the water, sometimes practicing a clumsy dog paddle, other times just content to float gently on his back, his face directed upward at the cloud-filled skies.

  Theo rarely paid attention to the sky. His eyes were usually closed, his keen young mind lost in thought and as adrift as his lanky preteen body. Since the river was quite still at the point where Theo liked to relax and play, he was able to idly doze in this floating position, cooled by the water from the back while warmed from the front by the sun overhead.

  But this day the water suddenly sucked him down, holding him helpless beneath the surface by an unexpect
ed undertow. Young Theo's eyes popped open in shock, horrified and confused to discover the blue sky above had been replaced by a swirling mass of dim blue and brown, and in his ears was a terrible roaring as his eardrums were assaulted by the onrush of water now enveloping his helplessly prone body.

  He scrambled madly, trying to pull himself back to the world above. His arms pumped and his legs kicked and still he stayed in place, almost as if he were being held down by some elemental water demon who'd claimed him as a sacrifice to the river gods.

  Then the grip was loosened, and the boy was able to thrust himself free of the water and into the air, where his lungs gratefully sucked in life-giving oxygen in between bouts of coughing up the stomachful of the Connecticut River he'd swallowed.

  "Look here, Mark! We done come upon Algae Tanner!" a tenor voice said, cracking slightly on the word "upon" in a betrayal of the end of adolescence and the beginning of maturity, not that his actions were any indication of impending adulthood.

  "Right where you'd expect to find him," a slower speaker replied, his words coming out in a nasal tone.

  "What do you mean?" the tenor asked, setting up the joke.

  "Floating on the water, just like any old kind of pond scum."

  Bullies. Even as an adult he would still remember their names. One had been dubbed Merlin by his parents; the other a more pedestrian Albert.

  With his keen intellect, slight build and strange hair color (even as a teen the sandy brown had already started to transform into the eventual gray he would possess as an adult), Theo was used to being the butt of humor from the less gifted, and while he never took such pranks meekly, he wasn't the type to dwell upon concepts of revenge.

  As a result, he'd spent much of his youth isolated. Luckily he hadn't minded solitude. In fact, he'd grown fond of keeping his own council.

  Isolated. Yet he could still hear snippets of conversation swirling around him, like the blue water and brown silt of the Connecticut River of his youth...

  "Any diseases we should be worried about?" Theo didn't know that voice.

  "Negative. Cryo sleep kept him on ice. Nothing to fear, at least, nothing from his era. Still, I hope everyone in this operating room has had his shots."

  Laughter. Bullies again? Theo didn't know.

  "No, I'd say he'd be the one we should be concerned with. There are bugs floating in the air our guest has never had the joy of breathing."

  "Blood pressure's high. Pulse rate's racing overtime."

  "That's to be expected. Keep an eye on the lower numbers. If they go up another ten points, let me know. They should be dropping soon."

  "Negative on the drop, sir. Top and bottom are climbing to the rafters."

  "Dammit. He's going into cardiac arrest. We need the cart!"

  "Can we contain him?" a new voice, smooth, polished, asked.

  "I don't know."

  "I said, can we contain him?" It was no longer a question, but a blunt statement of fact, an order phrased hi the form of a query.

  "I'm trying. We're trying."

  "This is the first successful trawl of a human subject, a subject we chose most carefully. This is no unthinking fool plucked randomly off the street. We have plans for this man."

  "So what if he dies, anyway? We can always start over."

  "Meaning?"

  "Look, you muddle-headed dolt," a voice said with exasperation, "what we are dealing with here is time travel, pure and simple. Correct?"

  "Time travel of a sort, yes."

  "So if this goes south, we go back a day or an hour or a week and we activate the mat-trans and bring the quantum interphase on-line with the trawling guide and use the same coordinates to lock onto his form. Then we bring him here again. Tanner's still there in Omaha, alive, back in past time. We fetch him a little earlier and there's no problem, okay? Try and think."

  "I am thinking, and let me correct you on your misguided understanding of time trawling. There are no second chances. The variables are too great to allow us to make another attempt, no matter how much earlier we go back within the time line."

  The conversation had lost some of the urgency, growing more complicated and outlandish. Deciding he'd like to have a look at just who was parceling out the commentary on his fate, Tanner opened his eyes and saw he was surrounded by phantoms. Ghosts. Figures of white in white, as viewed from behind a distorting pane of glass. And that damnable breathing, his own breath, rasping in his ears like a blacksmith's bellows.

  Never a religious man, Tanner suddenly found himself in the presence of what appeared to be an- gels, and their presence fascinated him as much as it terrified him, for while the part of his magnificent mind that dwelt with philosophy took solace, the coldly scientific section of his brain was frightened. Angels were something he couldn't even begin to comprehend or explain. He closed his eyes tightly.

  Heaven or hell? He didn't feel the kiss of hellfire, but he was at a loss how it was supposed to feel, anyway.

  Regardless, he decided it was time to face his fears, and so Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner opened his eyes once more and found his vision blurred with tears.

  "He's awake again."

  "About time."

  A man leaned over into Tanner's field of vision, a portly man with a wide face and a well-groomed black mustache. The eyes peering down were so dark they appeared to be the same color as the man's jet-black hair.

  The mouth beneath the mustache opened, casting forth a smell of garlic and tomato, as if the man had just eaten a particularly tangy salad and dressing.

  "Hello, Theo. How do you feel?" he asked gently.

  "Do not," the figure on the hospital bed rasped, the interior of his mouth dry. The comers of his mouth were spotted with dried blood where his lips had cracked from lack of moisture.

  "I'm sorry?"

  "Do not call me that," Tanner said, enunciating each word as precisely as his dry mouth and throat would allow.

  "Theo?" the man said, puzzled. He consulted a black notebook, not turning beyond the first page. "It's your name, isn't it?"

  "Only...only my beloved Emily calls me that," Tanner stammered, wondering what had happened to his voice.

  The man frowned as he flipped pages in the compact book. "Emily...Emily...help me here, somebody. Is she the wife? Mother? Child?"

  "Wife...wife. My wife. What has happened to me? To her?" Tanner asked, struggling to come to terms with what his memory was telling him-a great sucking sound and the eye of God opened and the wind and blood, so much blood before being lain to rest amongst the angels.

  Tanner's query was ignored as the man made a note in the book. "Wife. How could I have missed the wife?" he murmured before he spoke aloud again.

  "You've been through a terrific strain, Dr. Tanner. To be frank, I'm amazed you survived."

  "Survived what? What happened to me?"

  "Something wonderful." A blond woman with an eager smile chirped. "You're the first!"

  "It does not feel all that wonderful, my dear," Tanner said, running his tongue along the inside of his mouth. "It feels most horrible. Like I have been dead and resurrected."

  "That's to be expected. My name is Herman

  Welles. I'll be serving as your physician and your sounding board until you're fully acclimated to our program here."

  Suddenly Tanner sat bolt upright in the hospital bed, nearly cracking his head on a slight overhang of electric lights mounted above the headboard. "Where is my wife? My children?" he cried in a shrill voice that fright caused to climb into the upper vocal register.

  "Later," Welles responded. "For now, we are only concerned with you and your well-being."

  "Hang my well-being, man!" Tanner thundered, his normal bass voice having returned to echo off the walls of the small room. "I need to see my wife and little Rachel and Jolyon!"

  In his haste to get out of the bed, Tanner hadn't commented on the bank of high-tech medical equipment blinking to his left, or on the style of clothing Welles and the two
other attendants in the room were wearing. An IV drip in one of his lean arms tore free in a spray of blood and solution as he made his way out of the hospital bed.

  "Dr. Tanner, please!" the nurse said, lunging to grab the leaking IV.

  "Are they all right?" he asked her fearfully. His bright blue eyes darted to and fro, examining his surroundings for the first time. The walls of the room were a neutral soothing mint-green color that matched his hospital gown and the linens on the bed.

  Turning to the man who seemed to act as the leader of the small knot of people surrounding him,

  Tanner asked, ' 'I-I must be in some form of hospital or medical facility, though I admit the design is unfamiliar to me and quite strange. Was there an accident? Tell me, are my wife and children all right?"