Damnation Road Show

Uncovering the mass grave had flipped a switch in Doc Tanner’s head. He had stopped talking the moment they found the bodies of the mother and child. Which was unusual, because normally Doc never shut up. At the time, Ryan figured the discovery had triggered memories of Doc’s own terrible loss of his long-dead children and wife, of the time-trawling whitecoats from the future who had snatched him from the natural course of his life in the year 1896, then played with him before bumping him further down the timeline, to the living hell called Deathlands.

Doc hadn’t participated in the speculation about what had happened in the ville, about who could have committed such a bastard evil deed, and how the deed was done. Nor did Doc vote when it came time to decide what in rad blazes they should do about it—if anything.

Some hours later, as Ryan and the companions tracked the overlaid tire prints of many heavy wags leading out of the ville, Doc had suddenly started walking stiff-legged, like a tall, scarecrow zombie in his frock coat and high boots. After he had taken several hard falls, despite the support of his swordstick, J. B. Dix had safety-lined him to his waist with a fifteen-foot length of rope to keep him from wandering off and breaking his neck.

A week had passed since they came on the looted ville and the mass grave. A week of walking, first in the wheel ruts of the presumed chillers to the ville of Perdition, then overland to try to intersect the path of the already departed convoy. In that time, Doc hadn’t improved, and J.B. still towed him, out of duty and friendship.

The peeling sweat on J.B.’s face cut stripes of clean skin through the caked yellow grime; his wire-rimmed spectacles were smeared with a mixture of both. The stocky man wore his precious fedora hat screwed down on his head as he strained forward. Seeing the determination on his face made a flicker of a smile cross Ryan’s lips. He had known John Barrymore Dix since their wild and woolly days with the legendary Trader. J.B. had been that operation’s Armorer, a nickname that had stuck. They were best friends then, as now.

J.B. never said he was sorry when he wasn’t.

And he never gave up.

As Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner was dragged along, he railed at a god who was either absent, or oblivious, or malevolent. Or some of each. Doc was an educated man. He used big words. Complicated arguments chased his thoughts, rather than vice versa, like angry wasps trapped inside his skull. He made leaps in logic, dropping out pivotal points, speaking from opposite points of view. At times he seemed to be taking on the persona of his own grand inquisitor.

The only companion with the background to unscramble his philosophical ravings was Mildred Wyeth, and she had long since given up the game. The solidly built black woman was a medical doctor, and aside from Doc, had the most formal education of any of them. She had been cryogenically frozen after a botched surgery just before skydark, and reanimated by Ryan and the others nearly a hundred years later.

Mildred’s diagnosis of Doc’s current condition was grim. She had said his overwhelmed mind had twisted in on itself. Anger reflecting anger, which led to agonizing flashbacks, which reduced him to sobbing into his palms. The man was suffering from an unspeakable, unending ordeal—a price paid for no crime of his, other than the exquisite bliss of his former life. The life he had been born to live, and had been denied. In Mildred’s medical opinion, Doc’s rambling, often shouted, diatribes to imaginary gatherings of Oxford dons allowed him to flee the crushing reality of the present, where he was doomed to exist without his beloved wife and children.

Though Mildred sometimes acted as if she had little love for the old man, it was plain to Ryan that she found it hard to watch and be helpless to slow his further mental and physical disintegration.

The one-eyed man remained cautiously confident that Doc would come out of the tailspin eventually. As he always had before.

As they neared the ville entrance, Ryan saw a little girl in a loose-fitting, faded cotton print dress staring at them from inside the gate. A very pretty little girl with a headband of daisies. Her gaze swept past Ryan to rest upon Dean. The boy sensed he had a rapt audience of one. Though exhausted, he drew himself to his maximum height and flashed a smile at the girl. Ryan was amused to see that his son managed a bit of a manly swagger, with the 9 mm Browning Hi-Power blaster prominently strapped to his hip.

Krysty gave Ryan a nudge. “Like father, like son,” she commented.

A trio of armed men in bill caps stood behind a pile of concrete boulders and rubble that served as both a checkpoint and traffic barrier. Beyond them, Ryan caught his first glimpse of Bullard ville: an oasis of brilliant green that sprouted miraculously from the sunbaked yellow earth. In rows of raised beds, under slanting, corrugated metal roofs, the crop plants grew lush and tall. On the far side of the beds, simmering in the valley heat, predark plastic-and-metal signs on tall poles dangled precariously above a line of low buildings.

“Man, oh, man, could I ever go for a cheese-burger and a strawberry shake,” Mildred said.

Ryan grinned. “We’ll be lucky to get a plate of beans and a swig of green beer.”

“I know, I know. But a girl can still dream, can’t she?”

As they stepped up to the checkpoint, one of the bill caps shouted in an unpleasantly high voice, “And just who might you folks be?” Without giving them time to answer, he asked a second question. “What is your business here?” The two other sentries held sawed-off, 12-gauge, double-barreled shotguns at waist height. The range was such that, by discharging all four stubby barrels at once, they could cut the strangers not so neatly in two.

Ryan showed the guards open hands. “We’re just travelers on the long road north,” he said. “Come to water and rest, and willing to pay for it.”

The head sentry, a very short man with a full brown beard, gave them a hard once-over. He looked especially long at their complement of weapons, appraising them for possible threat and commercial value. When he came to Doc, he couldn’t help but notice the slack rope that connected him around the waist to the man with the smeared eyeglasses.

“What’s with the geezer?” the guard leader chirped. “He sick? He looks sick to me. He better not have the fucking oozies!”

Ryan and the companions knew he was referring to an incurable, mutated brain virus, much feared and believed to be transferred by cannibalism.

“He’s just old,” Krysty said. “Very, very old.”

“Oughta leave him to meet his maker, then.”

“Ain’t his time, yet,” Ryan said, the look on his face telling the guard to mind his own bastard business.

Unable to contain himself any longer, one of the shotgunners excitedly blurted out, “We got a carny come to town.”

“That so?” J.B. said.

The sentries shared wide grins.

“Best rad-blasted carny in all the Deathlands,” the head guard added. “Big show’s tomorrow.”

“We’ll have to stick around, then,” Ryan said. “Something like that you don’t see every day.”

“You’d better believe it,” the shotgunner said. “Gert Wolfram’s carny only plays the most important, big-time villes.”

“You can stow your gear over where the carny is putting up camp,” the head guard said. “As long as you got something to trade, you got the run of Bullard ville. There’s food, water, joy juice and the best damn gaudy house this side of Perdition. When you run out of trade goods, we will escort you out of the berm. We don’t give no charity here. And we don’t take no guff from those who don’t belong.”

With that warning, the guards lowered their scatterguns and allowed the companions to enter Bullard ville.

Once inside, there was no mistaking the proposed campsite. Not with fifteen wags parked in a broad circle on the baked yellow dirt. On the side of the largest wag was a crudely painted sign that read Gert Wolfram’s World Famous Carny Show. Lots of ville folks were standing around gawking while dozens of carny roustabouts worked to set up camp. The heavy protective tarps were pulled back from the trailered cages so the gawkers could see in. Only from a goodly distance, though. The newcomers appeared to have set up a kind of invisible perimeter that the ville folk weren’t crossing. Mebbe they’d been warned to steer clear? Mebbe they didn’t need to be.

As they approached the mob of spectators, a strange sound split the air. Two very loud tones, a high note sliding to low. Only Mildred made the connection to a foghorn; none of the others had ever heard one. To them it sounded like a baleful howl.

Beside Ryan, Jak cranked his head around and stiffened, as if ten thousand volts had just shot through him. The youth’s reaction surprised the one-eyed man. It was just an animal noise. A very large animal.

Before Ryan could raise a hand to stop him, the albino took off, running at full tilt for the cages. Some of the carny folk saw him coming and tried to block his way with widespread arms, but he feinted, swinging his white head one way, then squirted past them. Staring at his rapidly accelerating back, the empty-handed roustabouts yelled for someone to get him.

“Dark night,” J.B. muttered, “we were supposed to go in nice and quiet, and recce first.”

“Better back his play,” Ryan said, waving the companions after him.

J.B. pulled Doc along like a stubborn calf.

Suddenly the howling got a whole lot louder, and it changed in timbre. Instead of coming from deep in a huge set of lungs, it came from high in the throat.

It went from misery to absolute joy.

Then it stopped altogether.

There was no one left to try to turn back the companions. All the carny folk had rushed over to one of the trailered cages.

And with good reason.

It appeared that the agile intruder was getting eaten alive.

Jak had his head stuck between the bars of the cage, holding on to them with both hands. For a split second, Ryan’s heart dropped in his chest. He thought the young albino was a sure goner, his head half inside the great carnivore’s open maw. But then he saw Jak wasn’t getting chewed.

He was getting licked.

The mutie mountain lion’s tongue slathered his face so hard that even holding on to the bars with all his might, Jak couldn’t keep his boots on the ground.