Neutron Solstice

Chapter Ten

Ryan made love to Krysty as quietly as he could. Wrapped in a blanket, J. B. Dix was sleeping in the far corner of their hut, away from the door and window. His hat was by his side, and his Steyr AUG 5.6 mm pistol was tight in his fist. Doc and Lori lay side by side against a wall, the old man snoring gently through his open mouth.

Finn wasn't there.

Toward the end of the night's revelry, the mother of the girl that Finn had been dancing with had come along and whisked her away, chattering accusingly in Creole French at the plump blaster. But all hadn't been lost for Finnegan. The giantess who'd snatched J.B. had tired of his lack of enthusiasm and had sidled up to Finn. Nobody knew what she'd whispered, but it was the first time that either the Armorer or Ryan could recall seeing Finnegan actually blush.

As the dance had ended and Ti Jean had come to see them all through the small ville back to their own quarters, Finn and the woman had disappeared. The Cajun had laughed at it. "Marie has found a man worthy of her," he said.

Krysty had reached for him in the sultry humid darkness of the hut. Her long fingers spidered over his muscular chest and across the flat wall of his stomach, then down lower, finding him springing to a hard erection. He turned his head, raising himself on one elbow to kiss her. It was a long, lingering kiss, their tongues thrusting against each other.

"Yes, love. Oh, yes," she sighed as his hand touched her thighs. Her long legs opened to him, so that he could read the moist warmth of her body. The tender bud of flesh hardened as her passion rose. She kissed him all over his face and neck, nipping with her sharp teeth, drawing a bead of crimson salty blood from his lips. He bent his head to nuzzle her breasts, the nipples swelling at the touch of his tongue.

Unable to control his fiery lust, Ryan had rolled on top of her, his hips rising and falling, letting her reach and guide him into her.

He climaxed moments before the girl, her nails raking at his bare shoulders, clutching him deep within her. She'd sighed, pressing her lips against his chest to quiet herself, fighting not to waken the others in the hut.

"I love you. By Gaia, but I love you with all of my heart, Ryan Cawdor."

"And I love you, Krysty." But the words still wouldn't come easily to his lips, which for so long had been used to a cold tightness when he rode with the Trader. Love and tenderness hadn't played much part in Ryan's life for far too long.

"You don't have to say it, lover," she'd whispered. "I can feel you feel it. That's enough for me." She kissed him as they rolled apart. "One day it'll be easy and natural. Trust me, lover."

"I do, Krysty." And he really did.

Around three he woke, pressed against her back, cuddling like two spoons, snug in a box. The contact was enough to rouse him again, but the second time she mounted him, sitting above him, grinning triumphantly down into his face. Her hair seemed to billow about her face and shoulders, even though there was no wind in the hut.

With all the dozens and dozens of women that Ryan Cawdor had taken to bed, none had been like Krysty. She had the most amazing control over all her muscles, so that he felt sucked and gripped into a cave of sexual heat that squeezed at him, milking him for her pleasure.

After the second time they both rose, naked, and walked to the window of the hut, peering out through the slats across the trampled earth of the square toward the sullen, rippling surface of the river.

They stood together, savoring the faint breeze that came sidling in through the blind. She shivered, and he put his arm about her waist, pulling her close to him.

"Cold?"

"No. It's not that. I think I hear engines."

"Swampwags."

"I don't know. They're far off, almost beyond my hearing. I don't know if I really hear them or whether I'm imagining."

"Are you a woman dreaming you're an eagle, or an eagle dreaming that you're a woman?" he asked her.

"Don't be so fucking runic, lover," she said. "Next you're going to be asking me to describe the sound of one hand clapping."

"No, I'm... Look, there in the shadows, to the far right."

If they hadn't been standing so close to the window, they never would have seen the movement. It was a man, bent low, scurrying across the gap between two of the wooden huts. He was followed by another, and then a third. As the last one darted across, Ryan caught the flicker of silver moonlight glancing off steel.

"He's got a blade," whispered Krysty.

"I knew that Ti Jean was a swift and evil bastard," said Ryan.

"It might not..." She stopped. "No. That's stupid. Course it means trouble."

"And the engines you hear."

"Yeah."

"Couple of hours to dawn. What can?.. This Mardy festival, I heard of things like this. Some backwood villes where they pick a boy and let him do what he wants. Eat and drink what he wants. Fuck anyone he wants. For a special day each year. Then they slit his throat for the promise of a good crop. I wonder if..."

Krysty left his side, padding to her clothes. "Best get moving." She dressed with an elegant haste, tugging on her boots.

He joined her, polling up his trousers, then fastened the buckle on his belt and checked his guns. Moving silently to the door and inching it open, he peered around the edge of the warped frame. He saw nobody out there. Yet his sixth fighting sense told him that the whole of Moudongue was bristling around them.

"I'll wake the others?"

"Yes. I'll wake Doc."

J.B, came instantly to full awareness, the gun probing out into the darkness, his eyes open. "What? Trouble?"

"Men on the move. Holding knives. Krysty thinks she hears swampwags, far off."

Lori came awake, trembling a little like a frightened fawn, eyes glistening. "What?"

"Trouble," said Krysty, matter-of-factly.

Ryan knew from previous experience that Doctor Theophilus Tanner wasn't the quietest of men when it came to being roused from sleep. He knelt beside him, cautiously extending his right hand and clamping it across the old man's jaws, holding the mouth shut. Simultaneously he hissed into Doc's ear, "It's Ryan. Keep still and quiet." Doc jerked and struggled, his hands scrabbling to free himself, but Ryan was far stronger, holding him down on the floor. "Fireblast, Doc! Wake up, will you? Keep quiet Ч there's danger."

Only when Doc was finally still did he release him. The old man sat up, rubbing his face. "Upon my soul, Mr. Cawdor, but you have a grip like a poacher's trap. What ails you now?"

Krysty answered him. "We've seen men moving around the huts with cold steel in their hands, Doc. And I heard engines, miles off."

"What about Finn?" asked J.B., standing at the window, flattened against the wall, squinting out. "He's with that giant whore."

"Where?"

Lori answered. "Saw big woman and Finn. Go to house with picture of bird on door."

"A white cockerel with a red band about its neck," exclaimed Doc. "Three down from the long hut where we all danced."

In a couple of minutes everyone was fully dressed and armed and ready. Ryan once more looked out of the shuttered window where J.B. had been keeping watch.

"Anything?"

"No. Thought mebbe I heard a noise, along to the side, by the river."

Ryan eased out of the hut, keeping in the dark lake of shadow and peering into the surrounding forest where the Armorer had said he'd heard something. It was difficult to tell, but there could have been the faintest light of a fire. A dim red glow, but he couldn't have sworn to it.

J.B. joined him. "What d'you figure?"

"Get out. I reckon we should make for that township we saw. West Lowellton. This Baron Tourment runs Lafayette. Keep out of that ville. I figure we'll lose if'n we try and fight these Cajuns in the mud. Better we get into some ruins and make them play on our patch."

"We go and get Finn?"

Ryan nodded, slowly. "Yeah. You take Doc and Lori and go get him. I want to see what those bastards are doing by the river. I'll take Krysty. Meet you out where the trail narrows. Get to the far side of that and cover the path."

J.B. nodded and turned to go back inside the hut, then paused. "Chill the big woman?"

"'Course," replied Ryan.

All the noises of the Atchafalaya Swamp were oddly muted.

Ryan led the way, with Krysty a silent shadow at his heels. There wasn't a light showing in the whole ville, but ahead of them they now saw that a large fire was lit deep into the curtain of the mangroves. The wind was drifting eastward, toward the ville, so they could smell the scent of the burning wood.

"I hear a drum. Muffled, slack kind of noise," said Krysty. "Beating slow and even. It's 'bout in time with a heart."

Ryan heard it, too, or more exactly, felt it, as though it was striking within his body.

Something suddenly scurried away from beneath the toes of his boots, making him jump. It vanished with a soft plopping sound into the river.

Now they were so close that they heard the crackling of the fire. They also heard an occasional mumbled chanting, rising and falling in the damp air.

Ryan stopped so abruptly that Krysty nearly bumped into him.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"Don't like this."

"What?"

"This whole fucking place. The heat. The damp. The fucking mud. That creepy ville with its songs and dances and all the time... always there's something fucking rotten going on. Since we met we've been in the cold, high country. That's better, somehow. This swamp is fucking evil, girl."

"I feel that, too. Mebbe stronger than you, lover. How's 'bout us turning right around and heading back for the gateway and getting out?"

"No, Krysty. Trader always figured a man had to go out and hit a lick for what he believed was right. If'n everyone turned their backs when things got mean, then I guess the world would just get real fucking mean. Let's go see what the Cajuns are doing out here."

Now they were within fifty paces of the blazing bonfire, close enough to make out figures moving in a shuffling ring around it. They were men and women, from what they could see through the dangling fringe of Spanish moss on the trees. The riverbank was only a few yards to their left.

"Look," breathed Krysty barely audibly, pointing ahead and slightly to the right.

Someone was standing rock-still, leaning against the trunk of a topless sycamore. It was one of the Cajuns who'd asked Krysty to dance: a large, squat man, wearing an old plaid shirt torn across both shoulders. He had a long beard, streaked with silver like a tree seared by lightning. There was enough orange light from the fire to show that he was cradling a blaster. It was a long, old-fashioned musket, like the one...

"The one that killed Henn," Ryan said.

Revenge was one of the sweetest-tasting dishes in all creation to Ryan. But he had been alive long enough to know that it was also a dangerous pleasure. If this was the man who had slaughtered Hennings, then it would be good to ice him. But only if it could be done safely.

The drums, would drown out the noise of a cautious approach, Ryan realized as he studied the man, who was obviously supposed to be on guard. The stock of the musket, bound with baling wire, rested on the soft earth. There was a machete, similar to Ryan's own steel panga, sheathed on the man's left hip; a smaller knife was strapped to his right knee. Beyond him, the fire was burning brightly, the breeze carrying the scent of bitter spices to them.

At his side, Krysty looked up at Ryan's, face, seeing the orange light flickering across the hard, almost brutal planes of the high cheeks, throwing his good right eye into shadow. The faint gleam, of the strong teeth was revealed between parted lips. It was a face of total, cruel concentration. The girl knew that he was considering how best he could murder this Cajun: it showed in every angle of the taut face. Yet it was a face that only an hour or so before she had seen melt into gentle consideration in their love-making.

The Cajun's name was Henri de la Tour. As he leaned against the bole of the tree, he contemplated the hours to come. Once the rituals were finished, they would collect the outsiders and take them for the new ceremonies. But if the baron was interested in them, then they must not be unduly harmed.

Yet the girl with hair as red as glowing coals in a fire...

His head was sunk on his breast, and he lifted it, jerking a hand up in irritation at the feathery touch of an insect near his ear. The movement exposed the side of his neck above the collar of the shirt, uncovered by the long beard.

"Merde," he hissed. Even to someone who'd spent all of his life in the swamps, the insects could be torture. There had been a woman in Moudongue, named Jenny, whose skin had carried a subtle odor that was irresistible to the hordes of biting insects around the bayous. Poor Jenny. She'd tried getting help from the local voodoo priests. Even gone to Mother Midnight and begged aid against the swarming skein of fluttering flies that always hung around her long hair and face. In the end, Henri recollected, Jenny had been driven insane. Clearly mad, she had run screaming into the splashing shallows of the nearest slime hole, tearing great bloody gouges in her face. No one who had watched the frenzy of her thrashing in the gray-brown ooze tried to help her. It hadn't taken long for the sinister caymans, attracted by the disturbance, to slither from the banks.

Again there was an insect brushing at his hair, making him twitch with irritation.

He moved his head to precisely the right position.

De la Tour cursed fluently, slapping his hand to the point just below the right ear where the bastard moustiquehad stung him. Sharp and painful, where the big carotid artery carried the blood from the aorta to the brain.

In the darkness of the forest, the Cajun heard rain pattering on the leaf-mold around his worn boots. That was strange as it wasn't raining. Somehow it was hard to concentrate on why that should be so peculiar.

It was definitely raining. Henri could feel rain soaking through the collar of his shirt on one side, running over his skin. Warm.

"Chaud?" he muttered, puzzled by the heat, of the rain.

He felt his lips move, heard the faint whisper of his own voice. But all of it was happening a long, long way off. Happening to someone else.

With a labored slowness he reached up to touch the place where the insect had stung him, feeling for the lump of the bite. It wasn't a lump at all. It was a tiny mouth, set in his throat. Pouting lips that intermittently spat blood into the night air.

The Cajun's left hand, opened, and the musket dropped away to be caught by Ryan Cawdor before it could reach the ground.

Then the Cajun understood.

Through the murky slowness of his fading mind, he knew what was happening. He wanted to shout a warning to the others, busy at their ritual, but a hand, strong as a steel clamp, shut over his mouth, helping him as he felt his legs start to falter.

Ryan steadied the dying man, laying down the blaster with one hand, lowering the blood-splattered body to the earth. He actually sensed the moment that life departed.

The last cogent thought of Henri de la Tour was that he had, shamefully, lost control of his bowels.

"Pays the debt, Henn," said Ryan quietly, wiping his hands on the stubby grass that grew around the base of the trees.

In some double-poor communities, out in the deserts, Ryan had seen ceremonies, sacrifices, hoping to bring some sort of fertility or rain or freedom from plague.

They'd all been poor, shoddy events.

This was different.

The air tasted of fear. Followed by Krysty Wroth, the one-eyed man picked his way with exaggerated caution, closing in on the fringe of stunted bushes that hid them from the fire and the people around it.

There were eighteen: fourteen men and four women. All were naked to the waist, and sweat glistened on their bare flesh. What fueled the fire was rough-hewn logs, piled loosely in front of a broken block of concrete around eight feet long and four feet thick.

Spread-eagled on the makeshift altar was a huge boar, its skin pink in the light. A hemp cord was bound tightly around its long muzzle, muffling its shrill cries. It lay on its side, its legs and neck stilled with wire. Leaning against the stone rectangle was a long-hafted logger's axe, its edge glittering orange.

"They going to kill it?"

Ryan nodded. "Yeah. Got to be. I heard of some crazies out west kill like this. Trader said he once seen them slitting the throat of a girl child."

"What did he do?"

"Asked 'em first. They said it wasn't a girl. They said it was a goat. A goat without horns. I never forgot that."

"But what did?.." she began.

"Iced them all."

"How about them?" she asked, pointing through the trees at the group of dancing Cajuns as they circled and shuffled through the trampled mud to the slow beating of the drum.

Ryan patted the butt of the gray Heckler & Koch G-12. "Could freeze the lot of them." He paused. "Mebbe. And mebbe that's not enough."

"There's others back at the ville."

"Sure. Could be other villes close by. No, best get our heels clean of here. Join the rest where we said now we know what's going down."

"You figure we could've been next, Ryan?"

He shook his head. "Mebbe, Krysty. Let's go."

They turned their backs on the fire and the bizarre ceremony in the deeps of Atchafalaya and carefully began to walk toward Moudongue.

They'd gone about a hundred paces when they heard the drumming reach a swift crescendo, then stop. The stillness was eerie. A man, his voice high and cracked, sang out some words in a foreign language. It sounded like "Je suis rouge,Фwhatever that meant.

The words were echoed by the rest of... Ryan almost thought of them as a congregation, like some of the church-belt crazies in Deathlands. There was a moment of awful teetering silence, as if the world around licked its lips in lascivious anticipation.

The faintest whistle of a steel blade sliced the air.

There was a solid, wet thunk.

Both of them heard the stifled squeal of mortal shock from the tethered pig. But they kept their faces turned and continued toward the ville and their friends.

After the exchange of whistled signals, Ryan and Krysty rejoined the others. Doc and Lori were sitting quietly together along the faint trail that they hoped led toward West Lowellton. Finnegan and J.B. stood watching the immensely tall Cajun woman. She leaned against a live oak, with little trace of animation on her heavy, brutish features. She was wearing only a coarse brown blanket across her brawny shoulders.

"They're butchering a pig back, there at the fire," said Ryan.

"A pig?"

"Yeah. Better'n a goat with no horns." Only the Armorer would have understood the allusion; Ryan wrinkled his mouth in distaste.

"We going?"

"Yeah, J.B., I guess so. Why d'you bring the woman with you?"

"He wanted to fucking ice her while we was still fucking fucking," spat Finnegan angrily.

"You said..." J.B. started to protest, looking across the small clearing at Ryan.

УSo why's she here?"

"She knows all 'bout this fucking Baron Tourment," said Finn.

The woman showed little interest in their discussion, busying herself with digging something from her cavernous nostrils, examining it closely, then popping it into her mouth and chewing with stolid relish.

"Mebbe she can show us a way out of here," suggested J.B.

The paths were tortuous in the darkness; Ryan realized that once the Cajuns discovered them gone, they'd be able to move faster and farther. Perhaps the woman couldhelp. "Tell her to show us the fastest way to West Lowellton," Ryan ordered Finnegan. "We going to keep her?"

"Far as it takes."

While they moved, quietly and in single file, through the dank wilderness, Finnegan walked alongside the towering woman, trying to converse with her. Now and again he turned to relay something to Ryan.

"Says it's about two hours. Says there's some pack of killers there. Led by a snow wolf. Don't know what that means. Fucking English isn't so good."

Somewhere deep to the left there was a rippling sound, as if some huge creature had moved gently from land to water. Everyone heard it, and everyone made certain a finger was on a trigger. Doc moved closer to Lori and put his arm across her shoulder.

"She says the buildings are still there from before. She calls it the 'great sleeping.' Says that West Lowellton is 'bout the only place this cocksucking Baron Tourment doesn't run."

"Ask her 'bout him," said Ryan, falling back a little way, gesturing for Krysty to take point so he could listen to what the Cajun had to say.

"Says he runs the dead and alive. Those got the death without ending, she says. Baron got a fortress not far off. Runs the ville's all around. She says he's ten foot tall with a..." He laughed. "With a prick so long he ties it to his knee."

"What sort of power's he got? Sec men?"

Finnegan muttered the question. "Says he don't need that. Got the power. Makes it sound like some kind of wizardry, Ryan. Says he's the walking death himself. Says he can't be killed."

J.B. caught that, bringing up the rear of their small column, and he snorted. "Put him in front of my Steyr blaster and see if he's still walking and talking after six rounds go into him."

The towering woman heard him and giggled. It was a strange, thin, feeble sound, like that made by an ailing child, amazingly out of proportion to her build. Finnegan said something, and she leaned down to listen, one hand resting lightly on his arm. The other hand, Ryan noticed, stayed under the blanket.

"She says the baron would eat a little man like him," Finnegan said, gesturing toward J.B. "And shit him out for the... I think she means the gators." Ryan found it all like a bewildering puzzle. Gradually they were putting together some of the pieces. The whole region looked as though it had been nuked with neutron missiles that devastated people and left buildings intact. There was this mysterious Baron Tourment, who seemed to be a very big fish in a medium-size pond. Maybe used voodoo to keep his people in line. And there was this equally odd resistance group somewhere around West Lowellton, where they were heading. Led by a white wolf.

"A white wolf?" he muttered to himself.