Sunspot (9 page)

“Call it off!” Krysty cried as she sidestepped another headlong lunge.

“My dog’s friendly,” Meconium protested. “It won’t bite.”

The swampies found that assertion most humorous.

“Collect that rad-blasted thing before someone gets hurt,” Korb ordered Meconium.

The head swampie moved in slow motion to obey.

As Krysty dodged, the dog snatched hold of the edge of her coat sleeve, and with a savage twist of its head, drove her to her knees. Jak darted in and instead of shooting the animal in the head, brought the butt of his Python crashing down on top of its skull. The locked jaws opened and Krysty broke free. Jak took aim, but before he could shoot the redhead was back in the line of fire. As the animal shook off the blow, she drop-kicked it on the point of the chin, snapping its nose straight up. The hound’s eyelids closed and it flopped onto its chest, teetering from side to side. For a second it looked like it was going to topple over. Then it recovered and sprang up, madder than ever.

“Call it off!”

“But it likes you.”

Krysty cocked her .38 and pointed it at the crouching beast.

“It just wants to be friends.”

“Call it off, you stumpy bastard.”

“Call it off yourself, Snake Hair,” Meconium said.

“You got it,” Krysty replied.

As the dog once again launched itself at her, she rammed the muzzle of the Smith & Wesson into its gaping mouth and pulled the trigger. The resounding crack of the report was muffled by flesh and bone. Krysty pivoted to let the thing fly past her.

It landed hard, its legs buckling under it. The back of its skull was a smoking red ruin. As its muscles jerked, its bowels loosed explosively.

The other hounds went berserk, barking, howling, their legs driving, dragging their handlers along as they attempted to get at her and tear her apart. She backed away, blaster in hand.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Korb said.

Ryan watched Krysty and Jak leave with the dog pack and vanish over the rise.

“Can’t trust swampies,” Mildred said ruefully.

“Stab their mothers in the back for a line of jolt,” J.B. agreed.

“If their mothers don’t stab them first,” Ryan said. “Krysty and Jak still have their weapons. They’ll be all right. They’ll lay low and do what they need to do to survive.”

“We can’t do anything to help them under these circumstances, anyway,” Mildred said, looking around at all the blasters that would come to bear if they tried to make a fuss.

Ryan figured they’d be cut down by autofire before the good doctor could empty her revolver’s 6-shot cylinder.

At the head of the line of troops, Malosh and his captains had dismounted. The officers hunkered down around their baron, looking over his shoulder while he drew diagrams in the dirt with a pointy stick.

“I’m going to do a little recce,” Ryan said.

“Want some backup?” J.B. asked.

“No. This is a solo. Wait here.”

The one-eyed man slipped through the milling ranks of the fighters, over to where the horses were tethered. While he patted a horse on the rump, he strained to make out what the baron and his men were so intently discussing.

Baron Malosh looked up from the dirt and caught him staring. Malosh knew at once that he was trying to listen in on their conversation. “Come over here, mercie,” he said, waving him forward with a gloved hand. “Don’t be shy. Join the parlay.”

Clandestine recce no longer an option, Ryan walked over and stared at the diagram scratched in the dirt.

“Sunspot?” he said.

“That’s right,” the baron replied.

“Our position?”

“We’re about here,” Malosh told him, jabbing the dirt outside the diagram with his stick. “There’s a thousand-foot elevation gain between us and the ville. It sits in a shallow man-made gorge, blasted out of the bedrock to make way for the road.”

In close proximity, in bright sunlight, Ryan could have counted every yellow-headed pimple on his high forehead. But he didn’t. He wondered what was hidden under the leather mask that covered nose, mouth, cheeks, chin. Some hideous deformity of birth? Some gross disfigurement of battle? Or of ravening disease?

The baron’s four captains stared with rapt attention at their commander. Their respect for his generalship was obvious, and absolute. And it wasn’t based on fear. More like hero worship. Though the officers didn’t appear to be sadistic lackeys, reveling in their master’s excesses, they had taken the Redbone impalings in stride. And presumably all the others that had come before. The skewerings sickened Ryan to the core, but he could see that like the costume the baron wore, they were meant to create particular effects. To mystify, to horrify, to awe.

Malosh was as much a showman as he was a fighter.

The two previous nights, Ryan had kept careful watch on the baron’s tent, looking for any signs of weakness the companions might exploit. There had been no female fighters lined up outside, dragged in one by one, and offered up for his sexual pleasure. There had been no drunken revels. No jolt parties.

Counter to Malosh’s campfire legend, he was neither a serial rapist nor a debaucher.

Or mebbe he was just saving himself for Sunspot?

That was a distinct possibility.

“My forces have waged three wars against Sunspot ville in as many years,” Malosh told him.

“I take it you lost?”

“On the contrary, we won every battle, and we held the ville for extended periods, only to be eventually driven out by a counterattack from Baron Haldane. His men are in command there now.”

“If the ville has been overrun six times, there couldn’t be much left in the way of spoils to interest you.”

Malosh arched a sore-laden eyebrow.

“So Sunspot must have a different kind of value,” Ryan said. “Something that can’t be taken away or destroyed by either side. It’s a staging point for your attacks deep into Haldane’s territory, isn’t it?”

The baron’s black eyes glittered. “Good guess, mercie.”

“With so much experience, you must know how to retake the place from Haldane.”

“Even though the terrain is unchanged,” Malosh said, “what worked once may not work again. There are just three possible courses of action. A full-frontal assault, right up the gut. Or an encircling maneuver, followed by infiltration and a coordinated surprise attack. Or failing surprise, a prolonged siege. Siege is the least desirable choice because it would reduce Sunspot’s stockpile of supplies, which would be useful in our campaign. And a siege would also give Haldane time to send reinforcements. The key elements are the size of the force Haldane has stationed in the ville and new defenses, if any, since our last visit. That’s what will determine the final battle plan.”

One of the captains spoke up. “Shall we send a few of the fighters into the ville to gather intel on Haldane’s garrison?”

“Fighters would never get back alive,” Malosh said. “Haldane’s men would suspect them at once because of their appearance. No, our spies must be nonthreatening. At first or second glance, they must seem nothing but harmless fools.” The baron tossed aside the stick, stood and clapped the dirt from his gloves. “Bring the cannon fodder forward,” he said. “Let’s have a look at them.”

After a minute or two the fighters parted ranks to let the human shields pass.

Doc walked within ten feet of Ryan. Urged forward by a man in a baseball cap carrying a battered 12-gauge pump, he smiled a quiet, ready-for-anything smile.

Malosh assembled the human sponges then began sizing up each in turn.

He stopped in front of Young Crad, taking in the odd baby face and stout adult body. “Do you have a name?” he asked.

Crad nodded.

“Well?”

“Well, what?” Crad said.

“Do you have a name?”

Crad nodded again. From his desperate expression, he didn’t understand where the conversation was going. Or why. He did understand that his life depended upon his reply.

“Well?” Malosh snarled, leaning closer.

The swineherd drew his head as far back as he could without moving his feet. He swallowed hard a couple of times, then helplessly repeated himself, “Well what?”

“He’s just flustered, Baron,” Bezoar interjected. “He gets flustered easy. He’s called Young Crad.”

“A droolie by any other name,” was Malosh’s comment. “He’ll do for this mission.”

The baron looked Bezoar up and down for a second in silence, then moved on to the next man in the row.

“Ah, the pants-wetting geezer,” Malosh said to Doc Tanner.

“Up in years, I certainly am, Baron,” Tanner said. “But I assure you I have thus far avoided the humiliation of senile incontinence.”

Malosh laughed. “A well-spoken, pants-wetting geezer. You’ll counterbalance the tongue-tied young numbskull perfectly.”

“In what regard may I ask, sir?”

“Every idiot must have a loving caretaker. You and the foul-smelling one are going to enter Sunspot ville on foot by the main gate. You’re going to count the opposition force garrisoned there, and return to me with the number. It’s a very simple assignment. And looking and acting as you do, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting past the gate. Or back out again.”

Young Crad gave Doc a delighted grin.

“Go south until you hit old Highway 10,” Malosh told Doc. “Then turn east and start up the grade. You can’t miss it.” The baron turned to his chief of cannon fodder. “Ferdinando, give them a few cold potatoes to take along. And a little jack in case they have to bribe anyone.”

As the man hurried off to do his bidding, Malosh gave the newly appointed spies a warning. “If you’re thinking this is your big chance to just walk away from my army, or that you can give our position to the enemy in return for safety or profit, remember you still have friends on this side. Friends I can hurt in interesting ways. You have until tomorrow at this time to return with the information.”

Doc heard a distant flurry of blasterfire as he and Young Crad topped the first hill due south. The shooting stopped as quickly as it began. If the hellhounds made any noise as they tore into the Haldane patrol, he couldn’t make it out.

With Doc slightly in the lead, they crested and descended a series of low, rolling hills, putting the army of Malosh behind them. The monotonous desert landscape stretched on for as far as he could see. The baking sun was almost directly overhead. Doc kept track of what little shadow he cast to make sure they were headed in the right direction.

After a long silence, he heard another distant gunshot.

A single coup de grâce, Doc reckoned. The dogs hadn’t left much for the muties to mercy chill.

A half a pace behind him and three yards to the right, Young Crad moved without speaking. The swineherd whistled, tunelessly, mournfully and very irritatingly through his front teeth. He seemed completely unaware of or unconcerned about the danger they faced. Doc walked well upwind and maintained a constant distance from his droolie charge.

It took the better part of an hour to reach the old interstate. Before them a low four-lane bridge that had once spanned the wash they were following had fallen to blocks of rubble. The jewel of predark commerce stood sadly ruined, vast stretches reduced to their component grains of sand. Having never seen it in its heyday, Doc could only imagine the volume of freight, the motorized traffic flowing back and forth from sea to shining sea.

Gone.

And in all likelihood, forever.

They paralleled the route of the highway, turning east as the baron had instructed. Tiny yellow and white daisies sprouted along the shaded cracks in the ancient roadbed. Here and there on the shoulders of the interstate were signs of previous travelers and long-finished battles: abandoned campfire pits and wags, the latter burned out, bullet-hole-riddled hulks. There were graves, too. Many graves. Though the mounds of beige earth had been protected with heavy stones and chunks of concrete, something had pulled the obstacles aside and then dug down.

Doc looked inside a few of the shallow, oblong holes. He found no bones in the bottom, just strips of dirty rags. He didn’t bother looking in any of the others.

Ahead, a dropped vehicle overpass blocked their path. On the ground in front of the massive pile of cracked concrete and bent rebar were huge, green-painted steel signs. The chem rain and sandblasted grit had nearly erased the words. After a few moments of study, Doc decided it read, “Welcome Center 3 miles Sunspot Exit.”

When they rounded the far side of the overpass, he could see the gradual rise of the land in front of them, and in the distance the old highway ascended and disappeared through a hilltop gorge. They climbed for a while, then Doc said, “Let’s stop for a rest.”

The time traveler and the droolie sat on the shoulder of the highway with their backs to the sun. To establish some rapport, and put a temporary end to the soft but shrill whistling, Doc initiated a conversation.

“Have you ever been to Sunspot?” he said.

Young Crad shook his head. “Never been nowhere.”

“This is your first adventure away from home?”

“My first adventure,” Crad repeated. The small eyes in his baby face twinkled, rather too brightly under the circumstances.

“You realize you mustn’t say a word about Baron Malosh or his army once we’re inside the ville gates? If you do, we’ll both be chilled by Haldane’s troops.”

Young Crad gave him a blank look.

“And if we die in Sunspot,” Doc continued earnestly, “Malosh will chill your friend Bezoar and my friends, too. He will make them suffer first.”

The swineherd scratched his smooth chin, his eyes as devoid of understanding as two shiny marbles.

Although Young Crad was an integral part of Doc’s cover, it was clear he couldn’t count on him for anything else.

“Let me do all the talking, then. Don’t say anything.”

“I talk good, but people don’t hear me right.”

“That’s why I want you to stay quiet the whole time.”

“People back in Redbone always made fun of me,” Crad went on. “Just because I get along with pigs.”

If “getting along” meant horn-dogging them every chance you got, Doc thought but did not say.

“Pigs are my friends.”

Doc couldn’t help himself. He said, “More than just friends, from what I’ve gathered.”

“Piggie dear loved me. I loved her. Why is that bad?”

“People consider such a ‘love’ unspeakable.”

“So?”

“I can assure you the vast majority of human beings shares that opinion. A vast majority can make your life miserable.”

“I live in a pigpen,” Crad said. “I sleep in a pigpen. I eat in a pigpen, out of the pig trough. Only Bezoar ever had a nice word for me. My life could be worse?”

He had a point, Doc decided. “What did Bezoar say about your facility with swine?”

Young Crad chuckled at the memory. “Sometimes he liked to watch.”

In the Victorian era, from whence Doc Tanner had been ripped, such behavior wasn’t just fodder for shame, but for hard criminal punishment. He knew from his Oxford studies that in medieval times, both the unfortunate animal and its abuser would have been hanged by the neck until dead. Thus bred-in-the-bone depravity was wrung from the gene pool.

If only temporarily.

Because of his lack of interest in females of his own species, and their presumed unanimous revulsion at the sight of him, the chances were astronomically remote that Young Crad would ever sire another human being. That, and the fact that the mission required him to remain alive was all that kept Doc from putting a .44-caliber ball through his forehead.

As they resumed the steady, gentle climb, the earmarks of battle were everywhere. A maze of neck-deep fighting trenches had been dug in the sandy soil, scorched here and there by overlapping gren blasts, surrounded by uncoiled rolls of barbed and razor wire. The long-established, attack-and-retreat route was deserted.

Near the entrance to the gorge, perched on its rim, Doc saw a crude berm of dirt and eroded concrete. On the highest point of land, overlooking and controlling the floor of the gorge was Sunspot ville.

Just beyond the predark turnoff to the Welcome Center, the interstate was gapped and impassable to wags. A hundred-yard section of the roadway looked as if it had been blown out of the ground with high explosives. The resulting pits and chasms were filled with standing water. The piles of above-ground debris—earth, rock, concrete, rebar—formed an obstacle course that had to be run under the gunsights of the ville. Doc picked out what looked like three cannon or machine-gun emplacements spaced along this side of the berm.

Travel through the highway gorge by foot or wag required a detour through Sunspot and out the other side. Wayfarers who wished to proceed had to mount the rutted dirt road leading from the interstate exit to the berm gates above, walking in the crossed fire paths of a pair of hard-sited M-60 machine guns.

This Doc and Young Crad did at a measured pace.

As they neared the fifteen-foot-high berm walls, Doc saw that one of the gates was moveable. It consisted of a sideways parked tractor trailer that could be hauled aside by a mule team or by human beings. This was the gate for wags and livestock. The gate for foot traffic stood next to it. It was made of an old yellow school bus parked perpendicular to the berm, half buried under rubble, with its front end sticking out. The hood, fenders and grille of the bus were peppered with bullet holes. The engine block protected the sentries who manned it from blasterfire.

“Hold it right there!” someone inside the vehicle shouted.

A pair of AK-47 sights poked out over the dashboard and through the glassless windshield.

“Remember, let me do the talking,” Doc whispered to Crad. “Raise your hands in the air. Keep them up in the air until we get to the gate.”

“What do you want?” the sentry cried.

“We are just simple travelers,” Doc said. “Do not shoot. We are coming closer so we don’t have to yell.”

As Doc and Crad approached the front door of the bus, two Haldane sec men stood. The men were in their midtwenties, both darkly tanned. One was shirtless and had a narrow, hairless chest. The other was more muscular and wore a sleeveless, coyote skin vest, fur side in.

“Where did you come from?” No Shirt demanded.

“Rado territory,” Doc replied.

“Long ways off.”

“Plenty of hard walking,” Doc agreed. “Not a particularly popular route, either. We haven’t seen another living soul for better than two weeks.”

“Any sign of Baron Malosh?” Coyote Skin asked.

“No sign of anybody, as I said.”

“You and your friend come by yourselves?”

“Yes, it’s just him and me.”

“You two don’t look related,” No Shirt said.

“We’re not. He’s young and I’m old. I’m smart and he isn’t. We make up for each other’s failings.”

“Show us your blasters,” Coyote Skin ordered, tightening his grip on his AK and bracing his legs.

“Young Crad doesn’t have a weapon,” Doc told them. “I can’t trust him with one. He’s a triple stupe, I’m sorry to say. Given a blaster, he might shoot off his own head.”

Doc unholstered his massive Civil War relic and handed it, butt first, to the guards.

“It’s got two barrels,” No Shirt remarked as he examined the weapon.

“What do you call that thing?” Coyote Skin asked Doc.

“It’s a LeMat,” Doc replied. “Named after its inventor, Jean Alexandre François LeMat. As you can see, it’s a combination pistol and shotgun. The revolver cylinder rotates around the shotgun barrel.”

“Was this LeMat a plumber by trade?” No Shirt said, hefting the blaster on his palm. “Was he on jolt? It isn’t even centerfire, is it?”

“No, it’s a percussion weapon.”

No Shirt handed the blaster to his colleague. “What rad-blasted ash dump did you dig this piece of junk out of?” Coyote Skin asked. “Nuking hell, old man, why don’t you get yourself a real blaster?”

“I assure you, that one does the job adequately.”

“How fast can you reload it?” No Shirt asked. “And how many times can you reload it before you have to tear it down and soak all the parts? You should try something that shoots smokeless powder and cased centerfire cartridges.”

“Mebbe he’s as dim as his pal?” Coyote Skin suggested as he handed Doc back his pistol.

“Mebbe he uses the butt end to pound nails?” No Shirt suggested.

“With your kind permission we would like to enter the ville,” Doc said, holstering his weapon.

“Why should we let you in?” No Shirt asked.

“We saw evidence of a large scavenger at work below here,” Doc told him. “There were a number of freshly opened and emptied graves along the highway. We would prefer not to spend the night outside the berm.”

“Even critters need to eat.”

“Better you than us, old man.”

Doc turned his back on the bus and out of sight of the guards, dug into the small leather pouch Malosh had given him. He removed two small, crude bits of gold, each probably cut from a melted gob of wedding rings and wristwatches scrounged from some nearby ground zero. He handed over the nuggets.

The men tested the yellow metal with their teeth and found it to their liking.

“You’re good to go,” No Shirt said.

“Enjoy your visit,” Coyote Skin added, moving aside to let them step up into the aisle of the bus.

Doc led the way. All the seats had been stripped. The intact side windows were blacked out, their outer surfaces blocked by heaped dirt and rock, but the rear, emergency exit of the bus was wide open.

Doc hopped down off the back bumper, into a flat field lined with semitrailers and SeaLand cargo containers. A pall of greasy woodsmoke hung in the air. Tractor wags without doors or wheels, and rusting, immobile Winnebagos and Trailways buses surrounded the only permanent structure, which was the predark Welcome Center. As with the bus gate in the berm, bullet holes in profusion decorated the sides of every dwelling.

Because he had seen similar buildings along other interstates, Doc knew what the Welcome Center was all about. When the world was still intact, it was a place for tourists to pick up brochures and educate themselves on the state’s various attractions and points of interest. In this case, the state was New Mexico. The plate-glass windows of the Welcome Center were gone, replaced with sheets of metal and pieces of scavenged plywood. The curved sidewalk and the double-doored entrance, which had once invited legions of curious travelers, were guarded by two men with assault rifles. The Haldane garrison was housed within, Doc assumed. A gibbet made of a predark, portable basketball stanchion, complete with empty noose, stood ominously out front.

Looking at the surround of hammered earth, and the riddled, decaying structures, Doc wondered how many times the place had traded occupying armies. Each time it had lost a little more of its humanity, until it was simply a hilltop junkyard under an unforgiving blue sky.

Young Crad hopped down from the bumper. He kept his mouth shut, as ordered.