Lost Gates

“Because we’re being watched?” J.B. asked.

Ryan looked at him. He’d thought he was being over-cautious in noting the sudden frequency and change of the sec patrols.

THEY BRIEFLY exchanged details of what they had observed. It gave them much to ponder by the time they arrived at Travis’s shack. As they stripped and bathed, Ryan and J.B. listened to what their companions had to say before adding their own experiences.

“Whatever’s going on, it’s something that’s only just happened,” Ryan mused as he dressed. “We’re agreed that it’s only been today, right?” There was general assent, and he continued. “So Valiant has decided to take a closer interest in us. Why? Has anything happened?”

“As far as I am aware,” Doc said, “there have been no arrivals or departures since the convoy left without us. Jak and myself have been central, so would have seen any arrivals or heard commotion.”

“And I’m sure we could have seen anything coming from a long way off out in the fields,” J.B. added. “No, it’s got to be something from the inside.”

“Well, we haven’t had time to do anything except work like dogs then sleep,” Krysty said. “Nothing to draw any attention to ourselves.”

“Then I’d say we be on the ball and alert with Valiant, and don’t give anything away.” Millie sighed. “It isn’t much, but it’s all we got for now.”

RYAN WATCHED carefully. His muscles cramped and he wanted to grimace, to grunt through the pain. But he couldn’t give any sign of being conscious. He was pretty sure now that Doc—whose head was still banging rhythmically on the floor of the wag with every lurch and bump—was the only one of them who was still suffering the effects of the drug.

Krysty had regained consciousness. She hadn’t moved, but her hair betrayed her. While her head still lolled, her hair falling over her face to disguise any movement of the eyes, he could see that her prehensile hair was no longer hanging limply. Now it had become suffused with a life of its own. It moved subtly, waving in tendrils that seemed to curl around her neck and then reach out, as though seeking something. The movement seemed to be in sync with the rhythm of the vehicle, so that it would be unseen to the guards that sat, bored and unmoving, between them. Only someone who knew Krysty would appreciate what it meant.

So, only Doc was still out.

At least the majority of them would be ready for what lay ahead.

“COME, SIT WITH ME and eat, drink. We must talk, but only after you have sated yourselves. The day’s work is hard, and you aren’t yet used to our ways.”

Valiant gestured them to be seated. He lived in what had once been the diner near the old freeway. The tables still remained, as did the bar and grill. In one corner, where there had once been space for jukeboxes and slot machines, a drape-hidden area now housed his sleeping quarters. Some of the nearby tables used for business were covered with papers and boxes of goods and jack. Only two sec men were in the diner with them.

The other tables were bare. The booths along the windows facing the gas station had their padded seats covered with all manner of colored drapes and throws. This area was undoubtedly where the baron would relax. But even then, it was austere by the standards of most barons, even if luxuriant by the harsh standard of the ville as a whole.

The table he directed them to was in the center of the diner. The fluorescent lighting running overhead had long since ceased to work, and illumination was provided by tallow candles in beaten metal holders. The light from these formed a shallow pool that threw the rest of the diner into darkness as the evening began to close in. In the distance, they could hear the people congregate at the old gas station, a distant buzz of background noise.

Food was prepared for them at the grill behind the old counter. Some sort of brew was placed in front of them in jugs. After tasting their food and brew, Doc in particular had formed the theory that the food was nothing more than nutrition to the ville people, their taste buds having been scoured since birth by the harsh alcohol on which they were raised.

The food that was carried out from behind the counter and placed in front of them by two women and the man who prepared it did little to dispel that theory. But the companions ate, washing it down with the raw spirit, each waiting for the baron to reveal his purpose.

Two courses had been served from a communal pot, the indeterminate meal served onto their plates with ladles. The first course had contained some kind of pickled meat in a sauce that looked a little like the mud from which they dug the vegetables. It tasted a little like that would probably taste. Doc steeled himself, having no expectations. Jak could eat anything, and so passed no comment. But for the others, it was an effort to force down the food, which Valiant seemed to enjoy so much.

As, indeed, he relished the second course. Rice, which tasted as though it was seasoned by the gasoline that was their staple, was heaped on their plates. There it was joined by overcooked vegetables in a sauce that once more seemed to be made of mud, and some stringy lumps of fiber and gristle that may have been meat. Again, only the nullifying fire of the raw spirit could erase the cloying taste from their mouths.

While they ate, Valiant spoke to them of the ville, his plans for it and how he hoped to fulfill the dreams and hopes of his ancestors. The only thing that could hurry the process beyond hard work, he had decided, was to bring more jack into the ville. Jack meant power in the world outside their valley. It may not reflect on their own codes of behavior, but if they were to use the world around them to further the aims of their forefathers, then they had to adapt in some ways.

By this time, despite the best efforts of each of them, the brew they had ingested to ease the passage of the food was beginning to take effect. The light from the candles seemed to grow haloes of luminescence that spread out in ripples. The distant sounds of the gas station bar became distorted and echoed. And the long, rambling plans of Valiant seemed to grow more and more incomprehensible.

The third and final course was laid in front of them. Sweet meats in individual dishes that had been sugared by the raw cane that grew limp and rotting in the mud, colored by who knew what kinds of dyes into lurid colors that were still matt and dull, like all else in the ville.

They were doughy, stodgy and indigestible. But, unwilling to offend the baron before they had some idea of exactly why he had asked them to this meal, they forced them down.

Licking his fingers, Valiant sat back with the hint of a smile playing around his lean, hatchet features. It looked uncharacteristic, and set alarm bells ringing at the back of Ryan’s brain, fogged as it was by the potent brew.

“Your plans have something to do with why you pulled us out of work and got us here,” Ryan said. He spoke slowly and carefully, aware of the way in which the brew had crept up and fogged his brain. His voice sounded distant and echoed to him. “Why you were having us watched.”

“You noticed that, then?” Valiant questioned. “I was hoping my people were a bit more subtle that that. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. We don’t really do that sort of thing.”

“Then why start now?” Ryan countered. “And why not when we first got here?”

Valiant took a hefty drink of the brew in his cup. “It didn’t occur to me for a day or two. I don’t know why. But then it just sprang into my head. I guess it had been there since I first saw you all, but it had to come to the surface. See, there’s a baron less than a hundred miles from here who has this mission in life. I guess we all have them. Mine’s about fulfilling the destiny that our forefathers foretold for us. His… Well, it doesn’t really make that much sense to me, but it has to do with this trader who knows something about secret places that are left from before skydark. Now, he’s long gone, but he had this right-hand man. Well, two of them. One was a big guy with one eye. The other was smaller. Hat, glasses, liked blasters. Now you tell me, who does that sound like to you?”

Alarm bells and sirens went off in the one-eyed man’s head. Ryan and J.B. were pretty unmistakable. But who was this Baron? He tried to move but found that his limbs were sluggish. It was as if he was trying to make himself move from a very long way off. The commands from his brain, as urgent as they were, seemed to be taking aeons to filter through to his arms and legs. Even then it was as though the message was diluted so that the desire to spring up came out as a feeble twitch.

He tried to look around at the others. Even moving his head required an effort that it took supreme will to summon. From the corner of his eye he could see them—they all looked to be in a similar state to himself.

Valiant picked up one of the sweetmeats. “The only part of the meal that was served separately. Yours had an extra, added ingredient. I had to leave it till now so that you could get enough brew in you not to notice.” He sighed. “You know, I really do hate doing this. It goes against all the ways we usually do things here. But Crabbe will pay me big jack for you. I had to keep an eye on you all day, make sure I knew where you were. I can’t mess this up. Pity, though…”

Ryan wanted to call him a coldheart bastard, wanted to rise from his seat and plunge the panga into his heart. But he couldn’t move. As everything faded to black, he could see Valiant beckon his sec men.

DOC WOKE with a jolt as the wag pulled to a halt. The cessation of blows to his head jolted him back to awareness.

His head was spinning, the pain enervating as he lifted it up and looked around him at the interior of the wag.

“Are we there yet?”

Chapter Three

Brilliant white light poured into the interior of the wag as the double doors at the rear were flung wide. The sec men inside raised arms to protect their eyes, rifles held at an angle. All of the companions squinted, torn between protecting their vision from being seared and maintaining the ruse of being unconscious. One thing was certain—any chance of taking the guards by stealth had now been eliminated.

“Illuminated,” Doc whispered, the sole exception to the rule, his eyes wide and pupils reduced to pinpricks as he was temporarily blinded. “And the light pours out of me…”

“Yeah, they got to be the right ones—that sure as hell sounds like the crazy fucker,” a voice boomed from beyond the wall of light. It was followed by the sounds of laughter. Three, maybe four, male voices.

“Shit, you got to do that?” one of the sec men whined, his eyes still protected by a ragged sleeve.

“Just want to make sure you got the cargo, and it’s the right one,” the first man said patiently, as though speaking to a child.

“The people of Hawknose don’t double-deal. It isn’t our way,” said another of the sec men in the wag’s interior, his tone as pompous as his words.

“Yeah, sure you don’t,” the man replied, barely able to keep the humor from his voice. “Thing is, it ain’t me you got to convince. Crabbe don’t trust no one. Not even your precious Valiant. Seems a straight enough guy to me—you all do,” he added placatingly. “But it ain’t down to me. I’m just doing my job, just like you.”

The sec man who had complained sniffed hard. It would seem that his pride had been appeased. “That’s okay, then. Chill that engine, no sense in wasting gas,” he added over his shoulder to the wag driver, who complied. “Right, now let’s get these fuckers out of here and get the transaction over and done with.”

The sec men rose stiffly to their feet, no longer shielding eyes that had grown accustomed to the light. They hustled their captives to their feet, none of the companions making the pretence of unconsciousness. Now that their eyes, too, were becoming accustomed to the light, they could see that the sec men who had brought them were also augmented by five men, clustered within the arc of lights that cast such an illumination into the interior of the wag. The lights illuminated a semicircle of dirt that was about five yards in circumference. Beyond that, and the bank of lights, it was hard to see anything. They could be in a ville, or they could be in the middle of nowhere at a randomly chosen rendezvous. Until any of them had any idea of their location, it was best just to play along, a decision that none of them needed to consult to make.

None except Doc. The old man was last to his feet, staring around him in awe and wonder, as though seeing the world for the first time. Which, perhaps, in some ways he was. Mildred, casting him a glance as she was hustled by, wouldn’t have been surprised if he had a slight concussion from the constant banging of his head. Certainly, his dazed expression did nothing to dispel that notion.

The old man was the last to be hustled out of the wag and onto the hard ground. The others had stood idly as the sec men struggled with him—his balance seemed genuinely impaired and he had trouble keeping his feet—trying to scout their position without being obtrusive.

As they became used to the arc lights, the darkness beyond began to slowly coalesce into a series of shapes and shadows. They weren’t in the middle of nowhere—this was a ville. It was quiet, and now that the noise of the wag engine had ceased, they could hear in the background the familiar noises of people going about their business. It was late evening, almost dark. An overcast sky let little light from the moon seep through. Chem clouds hid a near full moon, and only the very occasional shaft of moonlight pierced the oppressive darkness.

The companions were, at a guess, on the edge of the ville. The sounds drifted only from two directions, the others yielding nothing but silence. Was this a compound of some kind where they were to be kept prisoner?