Baptism Of Rage

The driver, Jeremiah Croxton, kept his eyes firmly on the shattered roadway as the wag bumped over ruined blacktop, and the worn suspension offered little comfort as the vehicle thundered over each pothole and crevice. Beside him, resting against the far door, Jak watched the dry landscape pass by through the dirt-smeared side window, frequently peering ahead to see what was coming. After a while, Jak drew his blaster—a .357 Colt Python—and began taking it apart so as to oil its inner works using a finger-size bottle of oil he carried in his jacket.

From behind Jak, sitting in the cubbyhole in the rear of the cab, surrounded by what amounted to all of Croxton’s negligible belongings, the blond-haired Daisy peered over the back of Jak’s seat. She was watching Jak’s practiced, economical movements as he field-stripped his weapon.

“What ya doing?” Daisy asked, her languid voice close to his ear.

Jak ignored her, glancing ahead at the low rise that the broken road poured over, past the last of the emaciated wheat fields.

A half minute passed in silence before Daisy spoke again. “Hey, mister,” she drawled, “I asked what ya doing? You deaf as well as weird-looking? Don’t see much point in a deaf sec man.”

Jak turned to face her, his ruby eyes boring into hers. “Here guard, not jabber,” he told her.

At the steering wheel, Croxton guffawed. “Boy’s got a point, Daisy,” he said, not bothering to look behind him.

“I was just trying to make nice,” Daisy whined. “Thought a weirdo like him would ’preciate that.”

Oiling his blaster, Jak ignored her. But his mind was considering Daisy’s words carefully—not because they hurt, Jak was above such petty concerns, but because of the way in which she phrased them. It nagged at him that the girl had called him “mister.”

THE SECOND WAG IN THE convoy was similar to the first, a rusty old truck rig that had been converted to run on moonshine. Krysty had taken the shotgun seat next to a dark-skinned woman called Nisha Adams, who looked permanently tired. Nisha’s husband, Barry, a man in his midforties, with the tanned, leathery skin of someone used to working outside, drove the rig with an easygoing nonchalance, remarking on things that caught his attention at the roadside, keeping his hands in a four- and eight-o’clock grip on the rig’s large wheel.

Three other people shared the cab, sitting in the sleeping compartment behind the main seats—another older couple called Julius and Joanna Dougal, and the old farmer who had been attacked by one of the hounds outside the trading post and now wore a bandage across his wounded arm. The five of them seemed to get along well—they were old friends, full of anecdotes and not above teasing one another in a lighthearted way.

Krysty sat quietly, her green eyes watching the cracked strip of road and the surrounding landscape as they lumbered along, following Croxton’s rig at a steady pace.

“So, where are you from, long and tall?” Julius asked from the back of the cab.

Krysty turned and gave the man a brief smile. He was about fifty, dark-skinned and carrying a few extra pounds around his middle and on his jowls. Whatever he had farmed before he’d downed tools to go on this crazy quest for eternal youth, it had kept him strong and well-fed. “Name’s Krysty,” she began. “I come from a ville called Harmony. Have you heard of that?”

Julius looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head. “Can’t say I have, Krysty.”

“It’s in the past,” Krysty said with a shrug. “You folks come from a long way?”

“Couple of days on the road so far,” Joanna explained. Like Julius, she was a dark-skinned woman carrying a few extra pounds. She wore a machete at her hip, its blade notched here and there from use.

“Worth it though,” Julius added. “Imagine, being young again. You live in this hellhole so long and suddenly someone offers you a chance to be young all over again. Strong and healthy again. Can’t even imagine it, I’ll bet, young’un like you.”

Krysty laughed. “I grew up fine and strong, Julius,” she said, “but I still miss some of the things I used to be able to do.”

“Like what, child?” Joanna asked, encouraging Krysty to continue.

Krysty glanced back at the road through the windshield, her eyes scanning the back of the wag ahead and peering at the dead terrain all around. “Dreams,” she said wistfully. “I miss being able to dream the way I did when I was a little girl. That feeling of security that lets you dream just about anything.”

From the back of the rig, the old farmer, Paul Witterson, loosed a loud, braying laugh. “Ha. You’re still a little girl, sweetie,” he said. “Having curves in all the right places don’t change that.”

Krysty smiled, flattered by the old man’s observation. “Thanks for the kind compliment.”

“Compliment nothing,” Witterson stated. “Facts is facts, Red. Facts is facts.”

Gazing through the window to her right, Krysty wondered what the facts were about the spring of eternal life.

THE THIRD VEHICLE in the convoy was a broken-down, American-made four-wheel drive that had survived the nukecaust but not much else. It was patched together with mismatched doors and sheets of metal, and the roof wore the acne-scar evidence of acid raid erosion. The engine had been removed, and that space was used for additional storage, containing almost all of the occupants’ possessions. Despite displaying mutie musculature, the two weary horses that pulled the vehicle looked to be struggling with the weight.

Doc had taken the passenger seat beside the driver, a man in his middle fifties called Charles Torino, whose face was more scarred than the roof of his automobile. Mildred sat in the back, across from Doc, beside Mary Foster, checking the bandage that had been applied to the wound where her shoulder met her neck. A dark-haired woman in her late thirties, Mary was the woman who, along with her baby, had been snagged by the mutie wolf when the companions had first intervened. She was rocking the baby in her arms as Mildred dressed her wound, replacing the bandage.

“Ryan and J.B. think I am crazy, do they not?” Doc said, breaking the silence inside the vehicle.

Mildred looked up from her gentle work on the woman’s wounded neck. “No,” she replied, “don’t be silly.”

Doc’s smile was genuine as he answered. “Do not try to kid an old man, Mildred. I have known you too long. And I know what I saw in their eyes. They think I am out of my mind.”

“Well,” Mildred admitted, “no more than normal, I’m sure.”

Doc looked ponderously out of the missing windshield for a moment before he continued. “How about you, Doctor?” he prompted. “Do you think this old fool is crazy?”

Mildred cast a significant look at the other people in the automobile before she spoke. “Doc, I hardly think now’s the time to…” she began.

“It may be false hope,” he told her, “but you understand what would happen if I did not pursue it. I would not have been able to live with myself knowing that this opportunity may be out there.”

Mildred leaned forward and touched Doc’s shoulder reassuringly. “I know, Doc,” she said, “we all do. No one thinks you’re wrong or loopy. We just worry about you.”

The driver, Charles Torino, spoke in his hoarse, strained voice then, looking over his shoulder through the headrests to take in Mildred as well as Doc. “You folks think this is a wild-goose chase?” he asked.

Mildred shrugged. “I don’t know. It sounds pretty amazing. I guess we have doubts.”

Charles nodded, peering back at his mutie horses to see that they were still on the right track. “I seen it happen,” he said. “Old guy come through our ville two months ago, decrepit, looked like Old Father Time hisself limping along on that bad foot of his. He come and told us about this young-making spring he heard about out east. Said he was going looking for it. Six weeks later he came back.”

Mildred and Doc looked at the man, hanging on his every word.

“He was just a kid,” Charles said in his strained voice. “I mean, mebbe twenty years old, I dunno. Still had the limp he come to the ville with all them weeks before, but he looked young. Real young.”

“And it was the same man?” Mildred asked.

Charles nodded. “I’d swear to you it was. Mary?”

The younger woman holding the baby nodded solemnly. “Same eyes, same jawline,” she said. “S’funny, he looked kinda handsome as a young man.”

“Yet he still had his limp,” Doc wondered.

“Oh, the spring cured that, too,” Charles said with a throaty laugh. “Idiot was so busy dancing with joy he trod on a nail, went right through his boot. Put him pretty much back where he started at, I guess.”

Doc and Mildred both laughed at that, too, feeling a curious sense of relief.

“Me,” Charles continued, his eyes glazing over as he considered his words, “I’m hoping it can cure something a bit meaner than a broken foot.”

Mildred peered at the man and gently asked what he meant.

“I got me the black lung, miss,” Charles said with that throaty voice of his. “The big black crab inside me, making it a blamed chore to breathe.”

Cancer, Mildred realized. The man was looking for a cure for cancer.