Baptism of Rage (24 page)

The companions stood in the field of death as the stark, winter sun stared down with its blind white eye. Under the watchful eyes of Croxton and his sec detail, Ryan and the companions dug at the soil with the spades they had been handed. All except for Jak, who remained caught up in the net, lying against the ground.

“So, why the big ruse?” Ryan asked as he dug at the soil. “Getting picked up by your own men, I mean.”

Croxton laughed. “You think I wasn’t looking for an excuse not to bathe with those ugly old folks again?” he challenged. “When I came up with the idea of the spring, I should have said it only worked on pretty virgins, I swear to you. Hindsight is a pain in the ass, ain’t it?”

Ryan said nothing.

“Guess I don’t have to tell you folks that though,” Croxton said. “Not now, anyway. Welcome to Babyville, the greatest little carnie show on Earth.”

Krysty yelped in surprise as her spade struck something, and she turned the soil carefully to uncover a human skull, tattered remains of flesh still clinging to the yellowing bones.

Croxton laughed when he saw. “Looks like you found yourself a bunk mate there, Red,” he said.

Krysty’s emerald eyes burned with hate as she glared at him.

His foot on the horizontal edge, Doc shoved the end of his spade into the soil, feeling the anger welling within him. “You have quite the scam going here, Mr. Croxton,” he said. “I very nearly believed it.”

“Very nearly?” Croxton challenged.

The trace of a smile crossed Doc’s lips. “For a while,” he admitted.

“I worked in the carnie for a long while,” Croxton said, “going hither and yon. Saw a lot of this country, up and down like that, and I always saw the same thing. People looking for dreams to believe in. Just like you, Doc Tanner.

“Keep digging,” he added after a moment. “My story ain’t that long and, even if it were, I can still reminisce after you all have been chilled.”

Doc and the others continued to dig while, over in the netting, Jak watched with his fiery red eyes. While everyone else’s attention was on Croxton, Jak worked a blade from his sleeve and set to work on the netting.

“The thing about the carnie,” Croxton continued, “is people—marks—love a good scam. Can’t get e-freaking-nough. Bearded ladies, elephant men, this and that and mutie something or other. Look at this idiot dance, look at this old robot speak, look at this mule count on his clip-clopping hooves. Doesn’t even need to be believable. In fact, most people love the unbelievable shit more, because they want to believe that mebbe it could be. You come up with a good scam, and I am talking about a
real
good scam, and people’ll do all the work for you. They don’t even know they’re doing it, they just fill in all the blanks themselves. A bubbling pool
that makes folk young again? You have to be a fucking moron to buy in to that. But people want to believe, you see? Like you wanted to believe, Doc.”

“The placebo effect,” Mildred muttered as she dug her grave.

Two feet into digging his own, Doc looked up at the man, checking the surrounding sec men from the corner of his eye. He knew the others would be doing likewise, waiting for an opening, one last chance. The longer they could keep Croxton talking, the better chance that he and his people would be distracted, that Ryan’s group might make their bid for freedom.

“And where,” Doc asked, “did you find all these people to staff your…whatever you call this?”

“Theme park,” Mildred proposed bitterly. She could see now how the whole place was organized like some perverse holiday camp. A ghastly holiday camp where every visitor ended up dead.

“These folks?” Croxton asked, his gaze taking in the sec men and women who stood beside him, watching the diggers. “My kids, mostly, or kids from the traveling show that I picked up over the past couple of years. Good kids, they know how a scam works, know how to play their parts, how to hustle. Put the pretty ones out front, ’cause everybody likes a little shine on the surface. They had you, didn’t they? For a while?”

Doc nodded begrudgingly. “For a while,” he acknowledged.

Ryan didn’t bother to look up from his digging as he addressed Croxton. “But why did you choose us?”

“When I saw you folks take on those wolf hounds,” Croxton stated, “I thought you were something real special, something I could use. The way your team fought,
like some well-oiled machine. That took my darn breath away. I need people like that, people like you, to make this ville strong. People who can lead.”

Croxton took a step closer to Ryan, addressing his speech to the one-eyed leader of the group. “But I watched you and your redhead there and I came to realize that you are one of the rarest of things in the Deathlands—a man with principles. When I watched you two bury that baby, I knew it was over. Should have left you there and then, but I hoped I was wrong. Then your white-faced freak boy goes snooping around—” as he said it, Croxton took a step toward Jak and kicked him hard in the side “—and ends up chilling two of my people who got close to him. My own kids. That’s just plain unfriendly.”

Jak snarled as he rolled in on himself, stifling the pain in his side where Croxton’s boot had connected.

Croxton looked regretful as he spoke now. Ryan continued working at the soil, digging his own grave, now almost two feet down into the ground. As he dug with the spade, he felt its weight, judged its heft in his hands.

“So,” Croxton continued, watching Ryan shovel aside another clump of soil, “if it makes a whole crap of difference, you have earned my respect, Ryan, you and your companions here. I am real sorry I got to chill you now. This here is the future, and you could have been a part of it.”

Ryan tossed soil aside with the spade, glancing up at Croxton. “Well, for what it’s worth, Croxton,” he said, “I thought you were a pretty stand-up guy, the way you herded those people, led them here, took care of them and kept their spirits up. Reminded me of my father, and
he was a great man. I’m not half of what he was. I guess you, too, could have been something truly great if you had tried. Turns out, like most everything else around these parts, you’re rotten to the core.” As he spoke, Ryan stepped out of the grave and swung the heavy steel blade of the spade at Croxton’s form.

Croxton leaped back, and the spade swung just short of his legs, missing him by two inches. “Ha-ha,” he mocked. “You have got to be just a little quicker and a little less obvious than that, Ryan, my boy.”

The sec men turned their weapons at Ryan, every one of them watching him, daring him to continue. But Ryan ignored them, his lone eye focused on the spot where Croxton now stood.

“Less obvious,” Ryan repeated. “I’ll remember that.”

Assured that he had the upper hand, Croxton chuckled at Ryan’s bravado. Abruptly, his laughter turned to an agonized scream and, as everyone in the field turned to see what had happened, Croxton fell to the ground, howling in agony. Beside him, still bundled in the netting, Jak turned the knife in his hand, twisting the razor-sharp blade into the old man’s leg, ripping a bloody line through his Achilles tendon.

“Fuck!” Croxton shrieked as blood spurted from the wound. “My leg! My fucking leg!”

Inexperienced, the teenage sec force reacted in confusion. Many of them just watched, dumbstruck, as Croxton rolled on the ground. Some had the presence of mind to turn their weapons on the culprit of the vicious attack as he lay within the net. It didn’t matter, the scene had been set for the endgame, and none of the sec team had kept their attention on the main threat.

Twisting the top of his sword stick, Doc pulled out the hidden rapier blade from within its black sheath, lunging at a sec man who was now firing his blaster at Jak. The man’s blaster spit bullets uselessly into the soil as he was pinioned on Doc’s blade thrusting into his back.

Realising the threat behind them, the others in the sec force began to turn, blasters and clubs ready, but the companions were already on them.

Ryan held the spade in a two-handed grip, wielding it like a bo staff. He jabbed the spade’s handle at the gut of a young woman to his right and, as she crumpled, he swung the other end high, sweeping the edge of the blade across the face of a young sec man, splitting his mouth open in a spume of blood. Beside Ryan, Mildred swung her spade like a club, working its weight and length to knock a sec man in the head, and his companion across the arm, knocking one man to the floor and forcing the second to drop his blaster as he fell reeling sideways.

J.B.’s attention was on the blasters, and he swung his spade at a sec man holding a remade Heckler & Koch MP-5 machine pistol, rapping the man across the legs so that he lost his balance. J.B. stepped forward, grabbing the foot-long muzzle of the machine pistol as the sec man tumbled backward, kicking the man in the chest and wrenching the weapon from his grip before he could depress the trigger. An instant later, the Armorer turned the blaster on the fallen sec man, flipping the safety to single shot and pumping two bullets into the man’s prone form before turning the weapon on another enemy target.

Tossing her spade aside, Krysty dived to the churned-up ground as two sec men turned handblasters on her. Her vibrant red hair had made her the most eye-catching target in the grim field, and it was simple bad luck that two of the sec team had both selected her as their target of choice. Krysty rolled across the ground as bullets dug into the soil all around her. Then, one of the sec men fell under a swift burst of fire from J.B., and the other—confused—turned his weapon in the direction of J.B.’s attack. In that moment, Krysty sprang from the ground like a panther, her right arm reaching around the sec man’s throat and pulling his head back. His blaster fired twice before Krysty broke his neck, both shots flying wide of their intended victim.

After running his rapier blade through the first gunman, Doc had found himself fending off three attackers at once. Two were armed with knives, one a vicious-looking machete, while the other swung a nightstick with wild abandon. Doc thrust and parried, finally drilling his blade through the torso of the attacker with the smaller of the two knives. As the knifeman danced at the end of Doc’s blade, the other two piled upon him, forcing him to the ground.

“Come on, you old bastard,” the man with the machete goaded as Doc fell. “Let’s see how tough you are without your sword.”

Doc cried out as the nightstick thrashed against his ribs, and he thrust a sharp elbow into his attacker’s face. The nightstick man’s nose exploded in a shower of blood, and he seemed to forget his attack for a moment as he reached for his ruined face. Doc ignored him, turning his attention to the other attacker, the one with the machete. The curved blade whizzed through the air, and
Doc rolled out of its path, hearing the rush of the blade as it cleaved the air just a fraction of an inch from his left ear. The sec man crouched before him, raising the cruel blade over his head in readiness for another swing at the old man. On his knees now, Doc clenched his fist and swung it at the machete wielder’s face, connecting with the man’s jaw in a solid crack. Machete man fell backward, and Doc scampered over the ground to deliver another solid punch to the man’s face, followed by a third.

“A bit of the old-fashioned,” Doc snarled as the sec man fell into unconsciousness.

Behind Doc, the man with the nightstick had forgotten all about his bloodied nose and was rushing to renew his attack on his foe. As he swung the nightstick at the back of Doc’s head, something solid slapped against his raised hand, and his whole arm went numb. He turned to see Mildred standing over him, hefting the spade in her hands ready for a second blow. Then, the spade’s metal blade crashed into his head and his vision blurred into darkness as he lost consciousness.

“Come on, Doc,” Mildred instructed. “No time to rest.”

W
HILE HE HAD BEEN
lying on the ground, Jak had been working at the strands of the net with one of his hidden blades. When Ryan had tricked Croxton into stepping close enough, Jak had seized the opportunity, lunging at the man and cutting a mean wound as high as he could reach in the Croxton’s leg. That had been the catalyst, and, as soon as the battle had kicked off, Jak had found himself rolling to avoid bullets and kicks as he clambered out of the net through the hole he had cut.

Now, Jak was a little way from the main battle, finding himself a little space so that he could better use his throwing knives. Alec, Daisy and the other young woman, the one he had identified previously as Hannah, broke from the main group to follow Jak, and Alec raised his bow, the string pulled taut as he targeted an arrow at Jak’s skull. Daisy and Hannah stood at Alec’s side as he let the arrow fly, and the shaft tore through the air toward the albino youth.

Jak let himself fall backward, his arms whirring as he flicked the two knives from his hands. The spinning knives cut through the air as Jak dropped to the ground under the arrow’s path. As the arrow zipped overhead, Jak’s knives connected with their targets—Alec’s right wrist and his forehead. The former had been a security measure on Jak’s part, just in case the forehead blade had missed. Jak leaped back to a standing position as Alec fell to the soil, two leaf-shaped blades embedded in him.

Still standing beside the fallen teen, Daisy and Hannah were now in openmouthed shock. Daisy reached into her bag and pulled out what looked like a sharpened screwdriver as Jak closed the distance between them at a dead run. He was on Daisy in a flash, his right fist swinging at her breastbone as his left hand revealed another blade. Before Daisy could react, Jak drove the blade into her right eye, rending a bloody line across her face before slashing through the eyeball with the knife’s sharp edge.

As Daisy fell, Jak dropped with her and his leg swept out at the other young woman. Jak’s foot connected with the side of Hannah’s knee, and her leg buckled, dropping her to the floor.

The blonde girl was shrieking herself hoarse. Jak approached Hannah where she lay in the dirt. Her leg now lay at an awkward angle where his kick had connected; her kneecap had popped out.