Neutron Solstice

Chapter Twenty-Four

So ferocious was the blaze, so all-consuming, that within twenty minutes of the swampwag crashing into the front of the motel, virtually the entire building had been devoured, leaving only columns of twisted metal and stone and a windblown mound of glowing ashes.

Jak Lauren overtook the older man, leaping easily over the corpses of the sec men strewn along their way, turning and grinning at Ryan, his teeth bared in animal pleasure. The big .357 was in his right hand. Through the parking lot they ran, blinking as the wind blew a golden cascade of sparks all around them.

"There," shouted Whitey. "No sign."

The concrete dock, scattered with cinders, was deserted. Near the metal boats they saw the body of a sec man sprawled near the edge of the water, his neck snapped with a single crushing blow. Jak Lauren gestured at it. "Baron's work. Least we know we're on the trail of giant bastard."

The moon still sailed above the light clouds, its silvery glow strong enough to cast blurred shadows all around. The surface of the muddy lagoon glittered and danced with a million points of white, like a watery galaxy of stars. On the far side, Ryan could make out land, and a peculiar building standing on it.

"What's that?"

"Tourment's voodoo temple. Sacrifices of hornless goats. Girls slaughtered. Children defiled. The dead made to live."

"And the living made to die," completed Ryan.

There was no sign of life on the island opposite. Ryan squatted down, shading his eye against the moonlight, trying to make out what was happening. He saw some low shrubs and stunted live oak trees: enough cover to hide a platoon.

"What's on the other side?" he asked.

"Swamp comes on far edge. Way through in good light. Trails like gut-slit moccasin snake. Baron never find in this dark. Wait up, then try. Don't forget his legs real fucking weak. Like crutches. Die in thick mud. We take care, and we got him."

The lad slipped to the edge of the dock, looked searchingly over the water, then untied one of the boats and climbed in. Ryan went to join him, but Jak was too quick.

"Take your turn, Ryan. He's mine. See you later," And he was gone, the paddle slicing in and out of the ooze, the canoe darting, arrow-straight, toward the far bank.

"Fireblast!" hissed Ryan, taking the next boat along, easing himself into it cautiously. He was aware of how low in the water he was now set and recalled that there were giant mutie alligators infesting the swamp.

By the time he mastered the flimsy craft, rotating it twice before attaining the right direction, Jak Lauren has already grounded his canoe and hopped out on the slippery shore. He waved triumphantly at Ryan before disappearing into the brush, his white hair blazing like a beacon.

Halfway across the lagoon, Ryan's paddle grated against something hard and serrated. Something that moved away with a sullen reluctance. It felt a little like a massive submerged log, but every nerve in Ryan's body told him that it wasn't.

He worked harder, bending all his muscles into each thrusting stroke, feeling the boat shoot forward faster, a gurgling wave breaking under the bow. His ears caught a strange sound behind him: a thin, hissing noise, like escaping steam. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the water parting and something chasing after him.

The instant the bow of the canoe slid into the pebbles and mud, he leaped from it. His blaster ready, he spun around to face what had been pursuing him. But the water was calm and still, with only the faintest suggestion of a ripple toward the deeper part of the swamp.

He was motionless for a moment, gathering his self-control about him like a protective cloak, checking his bearings. In the moonlight, he could barely make out the tracks of the albino through the mud. But he saw a rowboat a few yards farther along, toward the building. Examining it, he discovered some extraordinary marks in the mud. Someone had fallen, and fallen again, and dragged himself along by hand. There was one clear print, and Ryan stooped and placed his own hand in the seeping mark. The fingers were nearly four inches longer than his. "Fuck it," he sighed. Tourment was going to be a difficult man to take if it came to close combat between them. The mud also showed the truth of the leg-supports. Great furrows vanished into the bushes where the land was less wet. Despite, or perhaps because of his enormous size, the baron wasn't going to find it easy to move.

The fire was dying behind him as he set out to move inland. The temple was open, and it was obvious that nobody was hiding there. The island was apparently no more than a half mile in length, but he had no idea how wide it was. The undergrowth closed in around him.

He never heard the swampies.

One moment he was up and walking; the next he was rolling over on his hands and knees, the G-12 pulled from his grip, someone's arm around his throat, another attacker hanging on his waist, kicking at his legs. There was the stench of gasoline and sweat as he grappled with the oily bodies.

Despite the shock of the sudden attack, Ryan was able to immediately retaliate. Heaving up, feeling the hold loosen on his waist, he snapped an elbow back as hard as he could, hearing a rib break, and a strangled gasp of pain. The arm was off his throat, and he was able to wriggle to his feet, drawing the panga, the best weapon for hand-to-hand combat.

There were three of them.

Two men and a woman. Muties, like the ones they'd seen on the day they arrived in Louisiana. All of them were around five feet tall, stumpy, squat and muscular. Dressed in torn pants and shirts, they had flapping sandals of hacked rubber on their feet. They stared at him blankly, the sockets of their eyes surrounded by odd scars. The woman held a small crossbow, and the men were armed with machetes shorter and narrower than Ryan's own weapon.

They breathed noisily through open mouths, their arms hanging by their sides. Standing gazing at Ryan, they seemed to be waiting for him to make the first move. Suddenly the woman raised the bow, aiming it jerkily at Ryan's belly.

The thought darted through his mind that this was a squalid and foolish way to die. Alone in the muddy darks, gut-shot with a wooden arrow. He tensed, ready for a desperate dive at her, his senses telling him it would be too late and too slow.

The bow twanged, and the shaft hissed through the air several yards over his head. Ryan stared as the woman staggered sideways, her nailless fingers plucking at the hilt of the slim dagger that sprouted from her neck like a bizarre pendant.

"Take the others, stupe!" hissed Jak Lauren, darting from the undergrowth, a knife in each hand.

The fountain of blood from the woman's severed neck pattered around them; she fell to her knees, then rolled heavily on her back. Her legs spread, and Ryan noticed with revulsion that a small residual penis dangled from her naked belly.

An instant later one of the swampies was on top of him, its dank, noxious breath hot in his face. The machete hissed toward him, and he wriggled around, blocking the blow with his forearm. He stamped on the creature's foot, making it mew like a kitten, breaking away from him.

"Cut its throat!" called Jak Lauren, who was fencing around the other mutie, his knife glinting in the moonlight.

The noise might warn Baron Tourment that they were close. So it was important that they dispose of this threat swiftly.

The swampie came shuffling in, waving its steel blade, grunting with the effort of each feinting blow. Ryan backed off, considering drawing the SIG-Sauer P-226 9 mm blaster. But the ground underfoot was slippery. One mistake, and he would be down and done for.

He darted in and back, stooping as though he'd slipped, one hand going down into the slimy mud. As he straightened, he saw the mutie looming over him, blank eyes like a shark's. Ryan threw a handful of dirt straight into those eyes. The swampie staggered away, grunting in anger.

The eighteen-inch blade of Ryan's panga flitted out and back and out again. Slick with blood. He cut the swampie across the lower forearm, and again across the top of the right thigh. Both had been deep, slashing blows that opened up the flesh into scarlet lips. The creature's machete dropped, and it hopped back, squeaking feebly.

Ryan waited, remembering how hard it had been to kill the living-dead muties before. Dodging around his opponent, Jak Lauren had been grabbed around the chest. But the mutie howled in pain, releasing him, looking in bewilderment at its stubby fingers, which streamed with blood from a dozen cuts; the tiny slivers of razor-steel sewn into the albino's clothing again proved their worth.

The other swampie was moving in on Ryan again, stooping to reach for the fallen blade, fumbling in the dark mud. It was an opportunity that couldn't be missed. Ryan stepped once forward and once to the side, blade up, muscles poised for the downward hack. Steel whispered in the moonlight, then came a solid thunk and grating sound. The panga eventually sliced clean through the mutie's scrawny neck, decapitating, it, the head rolling into the mud, the body slithering at Ryan's feet, jerking and twitching.

Wiping blood from his face, Ryan turned to see if the boy needed aid. But there was no need for worry.

Jak Lauren was amazingly, dazzlingly fast in hand-to-hand combat. Maybe the best Ryan Cawdor had ever seen. He switched the knife from side to side quicker than the eye could follow. The mutie lumbered after him, making great ineffectual swings with its machete that would have sliced the lad in half if they'd landed. Jak pulled away, then sprinting in toward the swampie, took off with a great spring and actually leaped clear over the man. Turning a somersault in the air, he still had the control to slash at the creature's face. The thin knife cut across the eyes, blinding the mutie with streaking blood.

"Off with head, Ryan," called Jak, landing in an easy forward roll, coming up in a fighter's crouch.

Dodging the mutie's helpless lunge at him, Ryan took a half step to one side and hacked with the panga at the neck. The living-dead mutie had a heavy build, and the blow failed to totally behead it. But the steel severed the spinal column and most of the flesh and muscle. The body fell, spouting blood that seemed black by the light of the moon. The round brutish head remained attached to the shoulders by a stringy thread of gristle and sinew, rolling behind it like an afterthought as the body pitched and jerked.

Ryan stooped to cleanse the blade of his panga in the stubby grass. At his shoulder, Jak Lauren was grinning. "Easy as shooting sec men," he said.

"Tourment'll have heard the fight."

"Let him. Can't get off here. With his crooked legs, he can't run or swim. I'll take him."

"Or me," said Ryan, sheathing the panga, then he picked up his G-12, wiping it clean of mud.

"Yeah. You or me, Ryan." Like a swamp wraith, the boy was off and running, visible mainly by the glimmer of his stark white hair.

The baron nearly managed to fool them. Despite his bulk and his clumsiness, he succeeded in lying quiet in the undergrowth until they passed. Then he made a lumbering charge for the boats before they could turn and follow. But Ryan heard him and yelled out a warning to Jak Lauren.

"Boats, Whitey!"

As Ryan sprinted back along the twisting trail, his boots kicking up spray around him, he glimpsed a monstrously tall man, striding as if he wore stilts, near the narrow strip of beach where the canoes waited. A triple burst from the G-12, fired on the run, didn't come within ten paces of Tourment, but it was enough to make him stumble and dive sideways for cover behind a low mud bank. Ryan, in turn, leaped off the path, finishing up flat against the trunk of a fallen tree, slippery with moss and cold to the touch.

A couple of shots smashed into the wood, only inches from his head, and he flattened down. He tried to identify the flat barking of the blaster. If J.B. had been there he probably would have guessed not only the model of the gun, but even figured out the year of manufacture; all Ryan could tell was that it was a big handgun. He strained his ears and caught the giveaway triple click of a hammer being cocked. That meant a revolver, which probably meant six rounds, but Ryan wasn't about to stake his life on that.

There was a blur of movement, topped with a streak, of white, and Jak Lauren dived to the ground behind another toppled tree a few yards away.

"Yonder," called Ryan, waving the barrel of his handgun.

Two more shots were snapped off, both coming close. Jak fired once with his Magnum, its six-inch barrel gleaming in the moonlight.

"We got him," he yelled. "Got him cold as dead gator meat."

"Want to talk, snow wolf?" came the voice, calm and measured. Utterly unhurried.

"Want to kill, bastard," replied Jak Lauren.

"Want to talk, one-eye?"

"Want to kill you, Baron," replied Ryan Cawdor. His words were rewarded with three spaced bullets, the last shot showering him with splinters of chipped wood. Glancing around the side, he was able to see the gun being withdrawn, and recognized it as a Ruger GP-110. Six shot.

"Fired seven. Means two guns. Would have heard him reload," he called to Jak Lauren. "Five rounds left," he said, raising his voice so it would carry to their adversary. "Five left, Baron. Another few minutes there'll be men coming over. It's done."

"I can find plenty of jack. More cards than either of you would see in a lifetime."

"Rather piss in your face," shouted Jak, snapping off a couple of rounds from the Magnum, the bullets kicking up a spray of earth near the top of the rise.

"One-eye?"

"Yeah, Baron?"

"I'll give you everything."

Ryan sniffed audibly. "Been offered a lot of things in my life, Baron. Never everything. What would I do with everything?"

"That's our last word? What's your name?"

"Ryan Cawdor. Yeah, it's my last word. Come out or stay there. It's all one. Quick or slow, Baron. Easy or hard."

The reply was two bullets in his direction, and two at the tree that sheltered Jak Lauren. That left him only one round, unless he had another hidden blaster or was going to reload.

"That's it. One left for myself. Would have liked to take you scum with me. Au revoir, mes amis." This was followed by a single muffled shot.

"Goodbye, Baron," said Ryan, motioning for Jak to remain where he was. "Could be a trick. Likely is."

But it wasn't.

They were both startled by an animal howl of searing agony. The huge figure of the Baron appeared, crashing over the top of the rise, both hands clutching his face, stumbling on the creaking metal and leather frames, falling to his hands and knees, rolling and rising again. He howled in dreadful pain.

"Watch him, Ryan," warned Jak Lauren.

Through the dim light, Ryan could see that this wasn't a ruse. Tourment must have put the muzzle of the Ruger into his mouth, intending to pull the trigger and blow away his brains. Removing the possibility of an execution at the hands of the snow wolf and his followers. But, as is surprisingly common, he'd screwed it up. The gun hadn't been angled correctly and the abrupt kick as he pulled the trigger had thrown off the aim.

As he fell again, hard, one of the leg-supports snapped in half, making it impossible for him to rise. Ryan could see the damage more clearly. It looked like the heavy caliber bullet had angled up and sideways, smashing the upper jaw, boring through the top of his mouth, exiting through the cheekbone, just below the right eye.

It had torn the eye itself from the socket, leaving it hanging on his cheek, like a pendulous ornament.

Ryan stood up, leveling the G-12, ready to chill the wounded man.

"Pull that trigger, and I'll ice you, Ryan," came the cold voice of Jak Lauren, also standing, his big Magnum looking absurdly large in his small fist. But it was very steady.

"What do you want, Whitey?"

"Couple things." He walked to stand by the thrashing man, and leveling the pistol, carefully shot Tourment four times. Once through each elbow and the center of each knee. The giant black man rolled helplessly, moaning in pain, unable to move.

His face like stone, Jak unbuttoned the front of his trousers. Keeping his threat, he urinated in the baron's upturned face, the yellow liquid splashing in the man's eyes and mouth, making him gag and choke.

"That's for my father. The bullets are for all my friends. But this last is for me," said the boy, bolstering the pistol and unwinding a length of thin cord from around his waist and beckoning for Ryan to help him.

Ryan Cawdor had always seen the justice of making the punishment fit the crime. For a man as blackly evil as Baron Tourment, that wasn't a simple matter. But Jak's plan was simple and would fit the bill.

It wasn't easy to manhandle the flopping, screaming giant down to the water, and roll him into the soft warm mud of the shallows while he tried to scream through his broken jaw and smashed mouth. Blood kept choking him, and he coughed and moaned.

The rope was tied around his waist, the other end knotted to the stern of one of the canoes. Both Jak and Ryan got into it, pushing off and paddling as hard as they could. The cord tightened, and for a few moments they were paddling and getting nowhere. Then the Baron was sucked free of the slime, rolling and flailing in their wake.

Jak looked back, nodding in satisfaction. Stopping for a moment, he slapped at the brown water with the flat of the wooden paddle.

"What's that for?" asked Ryan.

"You see," replied the boy.

Glancing over his shoulder, Ryan saw a huge log, motionless on the far shore, suddenly jerk into clumsy, waddling life and slither into the water and disappear. A V-shaped ripple on the surface of the swamp, arrowing toward them, indicated that the beast was approaching.

Ryan bent to his paddling, but Jak Lauren had stopped once more, gazing back at the floundering figure of the baron with an expression of gentle content on his narrow, scarred features.

In turn, Ryan stopped. Ahead of them the last portion of the roof of the Best Western Snowy Egret collapsed in a great shower of sparks, soaring skyward. For a moment, smoke billowed across the lagoon, making it difficult to, make out what was happening. Then it cleared.

The cayman was swimming alongside the towed body. It reared out of the water for a moment, its eyes gazing into the ruined face of its master as though it couldn't believe what it saw. Then the jaws opened, gaping, row on row of teeth.

And closed.

Ryan would never forget that sickening crunch of bone and meat being devoured, stripped from a living body.

By the time they had paddled back to the dock where the others waited for them, the end of the rope was just a bloodied knot. Nothing else remained.