James Axler Deathlands 018 Shockscape

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IT WAS STILL MILD as Ryan hurried back from the Multiplex toward the Snow
Palace, with the first stars appearing against the darkening evening sky.
He raced through the deserted lobby, up the creaking stairs and into the main
bedroom.
"It's on," he said. "Sec men outside reckon Sidler's coming tonight."
THE PLAY WENT WELL. Everybody turned up more or less on time, cast and
audience.
Nobody forgot their lines.
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Nobody bumped into the furniture.
The Multiplex was crowded with men and women, and even a few children. They
laughed and cheered in all of the right places and stood and stamped their
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approval at the play's climax.
Twenty Gooseneck wasn't there.
Reena Miller wasn't there.
Ossie Grant and Julio weren't there.
Nor was Jim Jennison.
Baron Wizard Sidler sent word that he still wasn't feeling too well, and he
was sorry but he wouldn't be coming to the performance.
Maybe the next night.
"MEBBE NEXT NIGHT," J.B. said, pulling off his combat boots and swinging his
feet onto his bed.
"Be the night of the eighth day." Ryan bit his lip, fighting away the tension.
The two old friends were alone in their room. The others were all with
Capestrano in his room along the corridor, enjoying their success over a
bottle of tart, fizzy wine that Ellie had bought from Rosie Owen.
"Have to be tomorrow. No choice, J.B., is there? Tomorrow."
Chapter Thirty-Four
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The dowager baroness of Vista ville sat in a deep winged armchair, the brocade
torn across the back, holding a small chromed pistol in her birdlike hand. Her
long white hair poured over her shoulders like a frozen fall of fresh snow.
Her eyes were wide, the pale blue swamped by the drugged circles of the
pupils.
"Just do it easy, bitch," she said very quietly.
Krysty waited behind a diamond-shaped table, its top inlaid with a variety of
wooden veneers. An unusual vase of yellow-and-cream glass stood at the center,
holding some dried rushes. Mildred was close to the door, one hand resting on
Dean's shoulder.
They'd been brought to the old woman's chambers by Rick Coburn.
It was late evening on the seventh day since Ryan, J.B., Doc and Michael had
left the ville for the trail north.
The sec boss had been uneasy, unwilling to talk as he led them through the
paneled corridors of the fortress.
"Why does she want to see us?" Krysty had asked. "Why not the baron?"
"Can't say."
"You mean you won't say." Mildred shook her head. "That makes it into bad
news."
He stopped. "I'm not sure. But I said I wouldn't lie to you, and I won't.
Better
Ryan gets back here with prisoners."
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"Or what?" Dean asked.
"Old lady was broken up by Zebe's murder and by Clare dying the way she did. I
don't really know the rights or the wrongs of it. But she pushed the baron
harder and harder."
"Still doesn't answer why she'd want to see us all now."
Coburn hesitated. "Been drinking, doing some serious downers. Think it's
mainly you, Krysty& mainly you she wants."
The old woman was wearing what looked like the shredded remnants of an antique
wedding dress, cream silk, faded past ivory toward yellow, the lace so fragile
that it resembled the bundled webs of a hundred spiders.
"You don't do it easy, then you'll end doing it fucking hard."
"That all you wanted to say?"
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"Show some respect, you flame-haired slag!"
"Baron said he wanted me to be his son," Dean said. "Me."
There was a bright laugh from the dowager, a laugh that sounded like warm
blood spraying onto cold stainless steel.
"Sure, sonny. You'll keep Alferd happy until something better comes along.
That something being his own flesh from the dry slits of these whores."
"Prince among men, your son, lady." Mildred looked at Krysty. "Why don't we
just leave her to her sick fancies?"
"You don't understand, do you?" There was a strange hiss in the woman's voice,
like the November wind blowing between the shingles on the broken roof of an
abandoned church.
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"Nothing to understand." Krysty shook her head pityingly. "Gaia! You don't see
that the way out of this tragedy is to look forward. Let your son find another
woman he can love. Love, not fuck. And then he can have another child and
struggle back to something like normal. But not this way."
It was as though she hadn't spoken a single word.
The only sound was the pine wood crackling in the fireplace. The wind had
veered and occasional wraiths of smoke came floating out into the room. The
thick walls of the old hotel kept any other sounds far at bay.
"There are chains, redhead. Chains for the black bitch and for the brat-child
if he rebels against his new father. We can have sec men break your knees and
elbows and wrists and fingers and toes and shoulders and jaw." She laughed
again, with a flat, crazy sound. "None of those parts matter to us. It's your
wombs we need, and we can take them. Even if we have your arms and legs hacked
off your body."
"Oh, Christ!" Mildred turned away. "You make me want to throw up, lady. Sooner
the Good Lord takes you to Him, the better and cleaner this world's going to
be."
The gun barked once.
It was only a purse blaster, a .22 caliber. But the dowager baroness was using
cross-filled bullets that expanded like mushrooms when they impacted with
their target.
Mildred felt the warm breath of the lead as it missed her face by inches and
smashed into the wall of the room, digging a spray of plaster out a hole the
size of a man's fist.
"Watch your mouth, you frigid witch-bitch."
Nobody moved. Dean's hand was on the turquoise hilt of his favored knife, but
Mildred's hand was on his arm, holding him in check.
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"Your son gave his oath," Krysty said. "Ryan comes back in two days with the
men the baron wants and we all go free."
Mildred was watching the old woman's eyes and she breathed out a quiet, "Oh."
The barrel of the pistol was drilling between her breasts. "What is it?"
Krysty echoed the dowager's question. "Yeah, what is it?"
"You don't feel it?"
"Feel?" Krysty closed her emerald-bright eyes for a moment, brow wrinkling
with concentration. "Oh, Mildred."
"You two wise women, or something?" the baron's mother asked, her voice
scraping up the scale. "Answer me or I'll chill you both. Might chill you both
anyways if you're fucking witches."
"Then Alferd doesn't get himself a new son and heir, does he?" Mildred spat.
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Krysty's face was slack with shock. "I never saw it. How could I have been so
triple-stupe to have missed it?"
"What?"
"Course. He's not going to keep his word. That was all shit. If Ryan doesn't
come back, he uses us like brood mares and takes Dean as his own. Chills us
once we've given him children." She shuddered as though seized by an ague.
"And if Ryan does keep his part, the freak bastard mutie has him killed
anyway."
"Ryan'll butcher him," Dean protested, his eyes narrowed in anger at the
betrayal.
"Words are cheap, little man," the old woman sneered. "Think the sec men would
allow anyone close enough to Alferd?"
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