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The baron stood before them

“Your skills and capabilities will enhance the progress of my ville as we work toward the perfect society. I want you with me, not against me. And of your own free will.”

“Do we really have a choice?” Ryan asked. “We’re here, surrounded by your sec.”

Arcadian considered that. “You may have a point. If you made a break for freedom, we could stop you. The fact that we found Dr. Tanner proves we can sweep this ville with relative ease. But if you choose to run, a firefight would only take out some of my men and lead to your demise.”

“So if we say no?”

“Then you’ll be held until you say yes. And you will.”

There was a steel and ice there that betrayed a will that Ryan knew wouldn’t be refused.

“What do you have in mind for us?”

Arcadian’s Asylum

James Axler

Death Lands _®

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them—and then, the opportunity to choose.

—C. Wright Mills

1916–1962

THE DEATHLANDS SAGA

This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.

There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature’s heart despite its ruination.

Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville’s own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.

J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan’s close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn’t have imagined.

Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

Dean Cawdor: Ryan’s young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

In a world where all was lost, they are humanity’s last hope….

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter One

“They say a week in a truck is a long time. ’Specially if you ain’t got no shitter, and no time to stop. Me? I say it’s how you get to know who your real friends are.”

Trader Toms cackled in a wheezing, cracked tone that broke down into a phlegm-ridden cough. Hacking and snorting, he drew up a phlegm ball that followed his trail of tobacco juice into a bucket bolted to the side of the wag. He was still wheezing and cackling, shaking his head and repeating the last four words to himself with a shake of the head when Doc Tanner politely cleared his throat.

“I believe the derivation of the phrase comes from ‘a week is a long time in politics,’ used by media commentators in the decades before skydark. They used it in much the same way, as it was not unknown for politicians to change their allegiances more often than they would change their underwear.”

Toms wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of a begrimed hand, leaving streaks of dirt in their wake. “Hell, that wouldn’t be difficult with me,” he breathed, the rattle in his chest making the words seem echoed and distant. “I gotta say, Doc, that’s why I like having you around. You may be madder than a bunch of stickies put in sack and beaten with clubs, but you know some seriously old and weird shit. Just like you, in fact.”

“Why, thank you,” Tanner replied mildly. To be sure, the fat man seated in front of him may have uttered those words in a tone that suggested he meant no insult—indeed, was growing fond of Doc—but the old man still had to bite back the bile and not heed to the temptation of taking the fat man’s equally fat head and ramming it into the bucket, so that he drowned in his own spit and phlegm.

Grinding his teeth, he glanced across to where Jak Lauren sat, cradling his 357 Magnum Colt Python as though it were a newborn babe. The albino youth’s face was as impassive as ever, but as their eyes met briefly there was a flicker that told Doc he would be backed up all the way.

But no: keep quiet, smile politely, and wait for the big payoff. It had been a long trek across the plains, with the companions unsure of where the next ville or settlement may lay, and their horses were almost exhausted—as were they—when the approaching convoy had become more than a cloud of dust on the horizon.

With no cover, and sapped of their energy, all that they could do was stand their ground and wait to see if the newcomers were hostile. Fortunately—or perhaps not, he mused as he watched the repulsive fat man wobbling on his seat—they had been greeted with nothing so much as deference. The convoy had drawn to a halt at a distance that had indicated no immediate attack would be forthcoming, and the fat man and his two sec lieutenants had dismounted from their wags to approach. This they did unarmed, before declaring themselves and making it known that, if little else, they had recognized Ryan and J.B. by description.

“You can see I got me one hell of a convoy, and I could use extra sec. ’Specially sec that knows what the hell it’s doing. And you boys do. Guess the rest of you ain’t no useless crap, either, else you wouldn’t be riding with One-eye and Four-eyes.”

The offensive words contrasted with the artless and disingenuous way in which they were spoken. If nothing else, Doc had to admit, they had been aware of Trader Toms’s failing from the first.

With little in the way of food and water left between them, and no real knowledge of the terrain, it had been an offer that couldn’t be refused.

Although, as the fat man shifted on his seat, raised one ass cheek and let rip with a fart so loud that it sounded above the whining note of the engine, Doc did ponder that a slow death from starvation and thirst may have been a better option. From the corner of his eye, he saw Jak tilt back slightly so that he could catch the fresh air that blew through an open port at the rear of the wag. As the fecal scent hit Doc, he wished that he had that option.

“You know, Doc, I love all that old shit,” Toms continued, with perhaps an inappropriate choice of words, in Doc’s view. “I like to try and pick up stuff like old mags, disks, vids… Funny, most people think they’re just junk, and they got no worth. Well, mebbe that’s right if you’re thinking just in terms of food or jack, and mebbe it’s right that you put that shit first, ’cause without it we ain’t gonna stand a chance. But that old stuff, man, the way people lived and thought before the big one… There’s wrinkles in there that can be used. Got a lot of ideas from that. Put me way up the food chain, more than people thought I ever would where I come from.”

“A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing,” Doc said, conscious of avoiding the irony in his voice while knowing at the same time that it would sail right over the greasy scalp of the trader. “However, the accumulation of knowledge, when applied, can reap dividends. Pay off,” he added, seeing the momentary look of puzzlement on Toms’s face.

The trader snapped his fingers and slapped a palm against a thigh covered with pants of a cloth so dirt encrusted as to be of indeterminate origin.

“Hell, that’s it exactly, Doc. Ain’t just what you know—it’s knowing who else knows it, and how the two of you can use that if you can’t turn it to your advantage on your own. That’s what I like about going to Arcady. That baron, Arcadian… There’s a man who knows his shit. Backward, forward, sideward and up a bear’s ass. Ain’t nothing that man don’t know. For real.”

Doc shrugged. “He certainly does seem to be a most learned man,” he murmured. Yes, he thought, and one who prized that knowledge and held it to himself jealously, unwilling to share. He had been cagey around Doc and his fellow travelers. Perhaps that could be put down to a healthy suspicion of those who didn’t usually journey alongside a trader with whom Arcadian seemed to do so much business.

But no. There was more to it than that. The baron was a ruler in every feudal sense that permeated these postskydark ages. Knowledge was one of the tools that he used to keep his people under the heel of his boot. Toms may have felt that he was a near equal—if not on a par—with the baron, but in truth he was a cretin in comparison. His learning was small, in real terms, if impressive for someone in this intellectually derelict wasteland. Doc would be the last to say this as a way of boosting his own ego—for where had all his learning got him in this world—but Toms was narrow-minded, and couldn’t visualize the uses of knowledge that Arcadian had seemed to have grasped with ease.

Because this was such a strong weapon in his armory, and because it was rarely challenged, so he had been unwilling to enter into the kind of discourse with Doc—particularly—and the others that Toms had tried to engineer. Toms could be ruthless in his business and the protection of his convoy and position. They had seen evidence of this. Despite his almost buffoonish persona, the workers on the convoy respected the way in which Toms had built up his convoy and given them a good livelihood in a world that placed such a thing at a premium.

Yet this was still a man who, when drunk on the potent brew that he carried for the recreation of his crews, could repeat endlessly the reasons why he liked to be called “The Don” whilst doing imitations of the actor from whom he had got the idea, cramming his cheeks with rags, shrugging and gesturing until he almost choked on the rags and his own laughter, falling flat and muttering about “Brando…brandy…” He thought he was so funny, Doc reflected, yet he was a harmless bore.

He couldn’t imagine Arcadian getting drunk, let alone having a repertoire of such party tricks. The baron had struck him as a man who could never allow himself to lose control in such a way. He had too much at stake: much that went beyond the wealth of the ville he ruled. Whatever it may be, Doc fervently hoped that he would never go back and find out.

Even as this thought crossed his mind, and he was aware of Toms burbling on about the conversion of his wags to run on water, not gas—and how he had seen something about this on an old vid, yet the motherfuck tape had frizzed to a snowstorm before all had been made clear—Doc could feel the cold fingers of fear tap at the nerves down his spine.

He looked at Jak. The albino youth’s normally impassive visage was curious. Doc shook his head slightly, then turned his attention back to the trader.

“Ah, yes, I believe one of the theories behind such vid wiping is to do with the way that oil companies liked to keep a monopoly on wag fuel. Not that different to now, really…”

It was the cue that Toms was waiting for: “Tell me about it. I did hear tell that the guy Ryan and B.J. ran with—” Doc had tired of the way in which Toms continuously got the Armorer’s name the wrong way around, but left correcting it for what seemed to be the thousandth time “—had a lake of gas. That would be cool, to find something like that again, instead of having to pay shit through the nose for what you can get. Then they complain when I have to up my prices because they up theirs. I mean, stands to any kind of reason, man, if…”

Doc allowed him to ramble on, half listening, yet disturbed by the ice that infused his blood.

RYAN CAWDOR and Krysty Wroth were riding in the eighth wag of the convoy, dead center. A fifteen-wag convoy was a pretty big undertaking and, like Doc, Ryan had decided that Toms wasn’t quite the idiot that he had first appeared to be. Nonetheless, both Krysty and himself had spent far too long in the lead wag, listening to his boring stories and putting up with the endless bodily functions that made this armored heat-trap seem preferable.

The center wag was under the command of K.T., one of the two sec lieutenants trusted with Toms’s convoy. A slim, almost girlish man of indeterminate age with dark circles under eyes that seemed to bulge out of his skull, K.T. was sharp but prone to fits of rage that seemed to come from nowhere. Ryan had wondered if it was jolt-induced when they first met, but had seen little sign of any narcotic usage on the convoy. Brew was okay. Toms drew the line at things that could truly impair efficiency. So it seemed that the sudden irrational fits of pique, and the colorful language that went with it, were merely part of K.T.’s natural state. Both Ryan and Krysty had heard some inventive cursing in their time, but had to admit that K.T. at full throttle showed a facility for stringing together obscenities that would make a deaf man blush. So it was that they were both secretly hoping that the sec lieutenant would blow his top over some trifling matter, as that was what seemed to trigger his temper. Ironically, under true pressure he was calm and collected.

But so far nothing on this leg of the journey—the first hop out of Arcady—had caused the sec man to explode. If anything, he seemed subdued by the ease of departure.

Given only a day’s notice of Toms’s desire to up and move on, the two sec lieutenants had marshaled the wag crews in a manner that had impressed Ryan. Not since he rode with Trader had he seen a crew respond so well to having their rest and recreation interrupted in such a manner. They were ordered to prepare for departure a good week ahead of the time that Toms had originally scheduled. When pressed by crew reps pissed at losing valuable drinking and gaudy time, he had said that Arcadian had given him a hint that there was some good business to be done in the ville of Jackson Spire, which was about 150 miles down the road. Close enough to reach within a day on good roads, two at most. Then they could camp while he went about negotiations, and return to their R & R.

Given that the crew reps weren’t in the best of conditions themselves, the way in which K.T. and his sideman Lou had gone about their business was interesting to behold. First, the two men had taken the initially pissed reps and dunked them in barrels of ice water to shock them into sobriety. Fishing them out of the barrels and slapping them into line where necessary, they had worked as a team. Lou was almost twice the size of K.T., and his opposite in almost every way. Where the smaller man had a manic stare, a loud voice, and seemed to be made of barbed wire, Lou was a giant who seemed to be encased in a roll of blubber. Yet despite that, and the fact that he had a laid-back manner and a soft-spoken, almost whispering voice, his almost seven-foot body had a hardness rippling beneath the fat that spoke of a layer of thickly developed muscle. And the hard strength showed in the way in which he picked up the complaining reps with one hand, sometimes lofting one in each massive paw before dunking them, lifting them out and handing them over to K.T. Here was where the smaller man’s temper and fire came in useful: the crew reps, stunned and shocked, perhaps still a little high from the brew in their veins, had him yelling in their faces, slapping them hard to make them pay attention.

Their orders were simple: go and collect the crews from your wags—you would know better than anyone else where they were. Get them out of the bars and the gaudys. No matter if they were on top of a slut or halfway down a glass. Back here within a half hour.

“Better do it, boys. It’s for the best,” Lou added mildly when K.T. had finished his tirade.

It was a routine that Mildred, watching at the time with Ryan, had described as “good-cop-bad-cop,” explaining at Ryan’s puzzled expression about the psychology of the soft and hard.

“That?” Ryan had asked with mild surprise. “That’s nothing new. Never heard that expression, though. And never seen it done quite like this.”

Yet such was the regard with which the crews held Toms, for all his oddities, that the crew reps were gone as soon as Lou’s mild words faded on the breeze, only to return a short while later with their crewmen in tow.

Ryan had doubted that the necessary maintenance and repairs could be made to ready the convoy in time. Half the crewmen were being held up by their fellows, and their level of tiredness, drunkenness and ability to concentrate on the task in hand was—to say the least—dubious.

And yet, harried and driven by the two sec lieutenants, each moving to the crews that he knew would respond best to his particular manner, it wasn’t long before the crews were beginning to look like the brew and lust had been riven from their blood. Goaded by the sec men and each other, they were soon fit enough to start the task in hand.

For the next eighteen hours straight they had worked, before resting prior to departure. Ryan and his people had been acting as sec and outriders for most of their short time with the convoy. Toms had told Ryan, as they stood on the melting pavement of the highway on which he had found them, that he knew from stories that Ryan and J.B. were survivors of the infamous Trader’s convoy. Since then, stories had circulated about their abilities to fight their way out of a tight corner. So their main purpose in being recruited was to provide additional and experienced sec to augment the force on a convoy that was swelling to the point of being unwieldy.

For the most part, this is what they had done. But now that they were about to leave Arcady sooner than originally intended, they had to earn their jack. They had been promised money and supplies on leaving the convoy, if that was what they preferred. They had also been assured a job as long as they wanted one. The benefits for this were obvious: Toms, while not generous, was an employer who believed that his crews would respond well to being well rewarded. Food was plentiful. Basic meds were stocked. Water was always well tanked. And there was jack for gambling, gaudys and brew when they hit a ville.

But in return, Toms demanded that his crews be ready to respond at an instant. They had to work hard, and turn their hand to anything that would assist the greater whole. So it was that Ryan and his people found themselves pressed into tasks that were alien to their usual way of working.

Yet the manner in which K.T. and Lou had managed the crews after the initial hard-taken tack had been revelatory. Despite the mouth that still could outcurse anyone across the breadth of the land, K.T. had been encouraging rather than scourging, and Lou had used his immense strength to facilitate speed on some tasks that would otherwise have been delayed by the need to find spare manpower for lifting.

Now, as Ryan and Krysty sat in the eighth wag with the sec lieutenant, and he said little or nothing as his protruding bug eyes scanned the horizon before flicking back to the instruments on the dash of the wag, checking the wag jockey’s progress, it was as though the stresses of the last day or so had never occurred.

“Taken this stretch of road before?” Ryan asked, wondering why the sec man seemed so intent on the surrounding territory. If what Toms had told them was correct, then Arcady was a regular on their route.

K.T. shook his head. “Shit, no. Trader tells us at the last minute that it’s another route out of the asswipe fucker of a ville. Usually take the road heading nor’ nor’ east, which is an old highway that’s been resurfaced in part. Smooth as a gaudy’s pussy after a close shave. Sweet, easy route. This pissing road leads who knows where.”

“Jackson Spire, presumably,” Krysty murmured. It passed through her mind that it was odd that this ville should be their destination, full of trading promise, when K.T. seemed never to have heard of it before. Her hair curled slightly.

“Yeah, probably does. ’Scepting that we’ve never been to that bastard pesthole ville before. Some ass-end-of-beyond piece of shit that ain’t got two turds to rub together, let alone serious trade.”

“Then why would it now?” Ryan questioned. K.T. shrugged. “Why the fuck should I know? Mebbe they got lucky and found some old stockpile on their doorstep while they were fucking each other and their pigs in the dirt. Mebbe they got some blasters and robbed some stupe ass convoy that wasn’t looking. Or mebbe Arcadian is setting them up in some way.”

“Setting them up? For what?” K.T. shrugged. “I don’t mean like the asshole wants to make ’em take a fall for something. But mebbe he wants to see if they can make something of themselves if they get a helping hand, or whether they’ll just piss it away like shithead scum.”

“That’s magnanimous of him,” Krysty murmured. “Kind of good,” she added as she noted the puzzled look K.T. shot her. K.T. sighed. “Weird fucker, that Arcadian. Me and Lou never really get much of a chance to be around when him and Toms are together, and I can’t say as I’m too pissed off about that. There’s just something about him that really puts the shits up me.”

His attention was taken by a patch of undergrowth on their left, and he peered toward it, cursing furiously under his breath as he tried to define if the rustling movement within it was a harmless animal, a possible predator or stickies waiting to attack.

While that occupied him, Ryan and Krysty exchanged looks. Such was the bond that had built between the two of them over the years they had been traveling that they could almost tell what the other was thinking.

If Arcadian had some motive for sending Toms to Jackson Spire, then they would be wise to be triple red. Maybe the baron was nothing more than a dabbler in trying to expand his empire than K.T. had half suggested. But maybe he had some motive that was as yet unfathomable, involving the convoy as much as—if not more than—the people of the ville.

The eighth wag of the convoy was an old military vehicle that had, at one time, been used as troop transport. Bench seats still filled the first half of its length before giving way to an area that had been cleared at the rear of the vehicle. Here were two mounted Brens, ancient but reliable, that covered both sides of the road. Currently they were manned by two of the wag crew. Ryan and Krysty were due to relieve them in an hour. Meantime, they tried to rest, knowing how uncomfortable the metal bucket seats of the Bren mountings could become. But it was far from easy, as Toms was a great believer in utilizing space to the max: cartons and wooden crates were piled precariously around them, barely contained by webbing. These were crew supplies, and were carried in sec wags to keep them separate from trade cargo. It was a reasonable system, except that it took no account of crew comfort during rest periods.

“Asshole trees,” K.T. cursed, louder than his previous mumblings. “Makes the land hard to read. You don’t read the land, you don’t know what’s gonna jump out at you.”

Which was precisely why Ryan and Krysty were themselves cursing at that moment. They were trying to get rested so that they could stay triple red, yet thinking that the only thing that was going to leap out at them on benches like these were their own kidneys.

It was going to be a long ride, despite the distance.

“DO YOU USUALLY follow this route?” J. B. Dix asked mildly, taking a look through the periscope attachment that had been welded into the roof of the rear wag. It was a fine piece of work, salvaged from who knew where and lovingly maintained. The welder had been a craftsman, the bearing-mounted swivel allowing J.B. to take a full 360-degree look at the territory through which they were passing.

Despite the mildness of his tone, J.B. felt uneasy. He had picked up from overheard murmurs that this wasn’t the usual route taken on leaving Arcady. The scope showed him that the roadsides were dense, impenetrable foliage, almost like a jungle—creeping vines, twisted and gnarled tree trunks with overhanging branches pendant with dark, oily leaves; thick, spiky grasses that poked out of gaps and lined the hillocks on which the trees rose and fell. Dark, ominous rustling from within could be danger, or could be just the movement of the heavy plant life.

This was the territory that had once been known as Missouri. Some of the vegetation he could see would have existed here before skydark, perhaps changed by the mutation of the nukecaust. But most of it was alien—not just to here, but to anywhere that he had ever been. Not least of which was the route they had taken into the ville. There was a sense of foreboding that hung over the old flat-top highway. It may have just been the darkness where the canopy of leaves blocked the sun, or it may have been the way in which the trees seemed to loom, as though waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Someone or something had laid this vegetation along this route. He’d bet on someone, and he also knew who would be his likely suspect. But the question was why? Was it a defense? In which case, why was the convoy being sent to Jackson Spire, which presumably was the only settlement along this old road, and the only place from which Arcady could want protection?

Or had they been sent this way because the foliage was part of an offensive rather than defensive measure? In which case, where was an attack to come from? The why could wait.

J.B.’s question was finally answered. “Not usual to go this way, no. But then, we’ve never been to Jackson Spire before. No reason to, really. As far as we were concerned, it was a dead-and-alive pesthole, with nothing to take us there. Nothing to trade, and no jack to buy.”

The giant Lou stretched himself, his arms rising so that they pushed against the roof of the wag, even from his seated position. He yawned, then pivoted on his swivel-mounted chair so that he faced the Armorer rather than the front of the wag.

“Why? Does it matter?” J.B. shrugged. He thought it might, but there was no need to cause unnecessary panic. “I was just wondering. It’s this weird shit at the sides of the road. Not what I remember when we came in.”

Lou thought about it for a moment, scratching at the stubble on his chin. “That’s true enough,” he said slowly. “Never seen anything like this around these parts before. Then again, Jackson Spire has a reputation for being rad-blasted, which is part of the reason people like us have avoided it before. Guess it’s just rad shit that’s done this.”

J.B. sniffed. “Yeah, guess so,” he agreed.

Of course he didn’t. There was an itch at the base of his neck, a sharp prickle that alerted him to a possible danger. If nothing else, he was going to stay triple red and be ready if it came at them.

Carefully, he stepped back from the scope, took off his spectacles and polished them with the hem of his shirt. As he did, he locked eyes with Mildred Wyeth. The doctor had been checking the med supplies that she always carried with her, separate to those of the convoy. It was the first chance she’d had, given the speed with which they had prepared for departure. But as she had listened to the exchange between the giant sec lieutenant and the Armorer, she had paused in her task. She knew J.B. far too well to take his words at face value, and she knew when he was trying to keep something back. Now, as he shot her a glance that was intended to stay hidden from the other crew members, she understood.

The wag that traveled at the rear of the convoy was longer than any others, and had a larger crew. Six people, besides J.B. and Mildred, were in the vehicle. A radio operator sat at a right angle to the wag jockey. All the vehicles were connected by an old shortwave system that, like the scope, had been salvaged and maintained with care. The whirling, crackling sounds of the rad-scoured ether were an ever-present low-volume background to the business of the wag, occasionally rising above the hum of the engine, sometimes blending with it almost hypnotically, broken now and then by the distorted voices of other wags passing messages.

The wag jockey had a sec man riding shotgun. Currently, an aging and emaciated man named Keef rode there, peering from behind spectacles thicker than those of the Armorer.

Behind these seats were chairs bolted to the floor of the wag. Lou reclined in one of these, and he was joined by another crew member. The final man in the wag crew—unusually, this was an all-male wag—was seated at the rear. A heavy-duty cannon was mounted over the rear axle, its barrel and scope exiting through the space that had once housed doors, but which had been modified to mold steel plate shielding around the blaster.

Around the chairs bolted into the floor were crew supplies, and along the sides of the wag were welded secure cabinets that housed meds and armament. It didn’t leave much room for the crew, cramming them close together. Yet, because of the low level of interior light—the windshield and wire-meshed glass on the side doors being augmented by fluorescent-lighting run off the battery—it was still possible for J.B. to convey all he wished to Mildred without anyone else in the wag being aware of what passed between them.