Desolation Crossing (24 page)

Maybe it was better that they had no idea of what may have become of them. Better to maintain ignorance than risk nightmares.

While the members of the convoy had, for the most part, contented themselves with rummaging in the remains, so J.B. and Eula had made it their task to get LaGuerre from his wag before Ryan and Raven directed its removal.

The young woman had said nothing to Mildred while the medic had treated her for her injuries—the same injuries that had prompted Mildred’s comments to LaGuerre
sometime later—and this as much as anything had caused the doubt in Mildred’s mind when J.B. had told her what Eula had said.

Back then, Eula had been keen to get away from the healer, and to return to her task with the Armorer. Her ribs strapped and precious morphine dulling the pain, she had joined him in scrambling down the incline, trailing ropes that were held at the top by Ryan and Raven.

They used flashlights to see their way in the interior of the wag. Although the sun was now up, the pit was deep and the angle of the wag meant that light was blocked by the solid panels of the armoring. There was, at best, a dim illumination in the interior as they picked their way past the stinking remains of the mutie dog and the still open rear door of the wag. Some of the blood and filth from the corpse had leaked and trickled into the wag, making the foul and stagnant air within worse than it would otherwise have been.

The stench of Zarir’s body, decomposing already in the heat, didn’t do much to help matters.

LaGuerre had been where they had left him the previous night, lying awkwardly and uncomfortably on the dash and windshield of the wag. He was semiconscious when they got to him, and was muttering to the chilled wag driver, cursing him in a patois J.B. recognized as similar to the Creole that he had heard people using in the areas where Jak originally came from.

Ignoring his ravings, the smell of decay that infested the wag and the screams of LaGuerre as they moved him and the pain cut through his delirium, J.B. and Eula made a sling in which they secured the injured man. Keeping talk
ing to a minimum in order to keep breathing as shallow as possible and so avoid the desire to puke from the odor of chilling that permeated the air around them, J.B. signaled to Eula that he would climb back the way they had come and take the weight of the sling.

Slithering past the sticky wetness caused by the corpse on the back of the wag doors, J.B. was glad to attain the relatively fresh air of the morning, even though the scent of blood and buying the farm was starting to rise with the sun.

Cody had driven his wag almost to the lip of the pit, reversing it so that the raised bar around the roof of the vehicle could be used as a pivot to pull the sling. J.B. looked questioningly at the wound on Cody’s shoulder.

“Can wait,” the thin man said dismissively.

The two men attached the ropes to the bar. J.B. went to the lip of the pit, yelled down to Eula that they were ready to begin, and while she steadied the trader in the makeshift sling, the Armorer and Cody began to haul on the ropes that ran through the bar.

LaGuerre was a heavy weight to haul, surprisingly so, but the level of delirium into which he had sunk had taken the fight from him, and he dangled helplessly, unable or unwilling to help them as they pulled. It took no little effort for men who had recently been exhausted by the rigors of combat to haul the injured trader up from the pit. In return, their only reward was a mouthful of semicoherent abuse in both English and Creole patois as the trader bumped over the lip of the pit.

As LaGuerre lay on the earth, both men realized that they were too tired to carry the trader to where Mildred had established a makeshift medical station, and also to help Eula out of the pit.

Cody swore softly to himself, then yelled out in a voice that made J.B. wince. It did, however, have the desired effect, and brought Raf lumbering over. The heavily scarred, dreadlocked warrior was immensely strong, as well as big, and plucked the trader off the floor as though he weighed no more than a grain of sand.

J.B., breathing heavily with the effort of hauling LaGuerre from the wag in the pit, could only look on in a kind of admiration as Raf carried the trader off to Mildred. Then he looked at the sling on the ground, where Raf had left it.

“This should be easier,” he said to Cody.

“Sure hope so,” the thin man replied, wincing as he flexed his injured shoulder.

J.B. was right. Taking the sling to the lip of the pit, he called to Eula and flung it down, aiming for the open door and seeing the rope harness disappear into the darkness. There was a brief pause while she made herself secure, and then she called back to him.

Her injuries were such that climbing from the wag would have been difficult—perhaps almost impossible—without aid. Getting down there had been okay, but the reverse journey would have put too much strain on her cracked ribs, which had already suffered during her forced climb of the night previous.

Fortunately, all she needed was someone to take up the slack and bear some of her weight as she made the climb. Bracing themselves, Cody and J.B. found that they had little to do in the way of hauling. As long as they stood still, she was able for the most part to haul herself out of the wag and up the sides of the pit. It was only near the lip, where the dry soil was at its most treacherous, that they were called upon to really exert any effort.

When Eula was out of the pit, and lay gasping on the flat earth, she looked up at the two of them as they stood over her.

“Anyone asks, it wasn’t this difficult, right?” she panted.

“Hey, no more than it would be for anyone with busted ribs.” Cody shrugged.

“’Sides which, look at how LaGuerre took it,” J.B. added.

Eula managed a grin. It was the first time Cody could ever recall her cracking her face since she had joined the convoy.

“Think he’ll teach us some of those words when he feels better?” she asked. “Only, seems like some of ’em were really filthy.”

Cody grimaced, flexing his injured shoulder. “Kid, we don’t get on with hauling his precious wag out that pit, he’ll give us a practical demonstration of ’em.”

WHILE LAG UERRE WAS BEING tended to by Mildred, and the wag was being hauled out of the pit, J.B. and Eula took some downtime. Everyone else was engaged in either wag maintenance or attempting to scavenge the remains of the ville, so they were able to rest up for a few precious moments with no one to ask why they weren’t engaged on another task.

J.B. wasn’t used to the idea of doing nothing, and he could see from the way that she was on edge, that Eula felt the same way.

“Didn’t think that you’d want to help me get out last night,” he said hesitantly. “Let alone stop me getting chilled. I owe you for that.”

“I might hold you to that,” she said. There was a silence more of exhaustion than anything else before she added: “LaGuerre has something in mind for you, y’know.”

J.B. frowned. “Like what?”

“When we get to Jenningsville. There’s a reason he agreed to take this run, and it’s not because of the bonus he’s getting for a quick delivery. That’s good, but it ain’t enough for the coldheart bastard to risk his own skin like he’s been doing. Ours, sure. He’d have no worries about doing that, but not his own. So it’s got to be big.”

“And he needs me? Us?”

She nodded. “Look, I’ve got my own reasons for being interested in tracking you people down. You can help me get to the bottom of something in my past, and—”

“You mean us? Or just me?”

“Mostly you,” she said, fixing him with a level gaze. “But you’re not what I thought you’d be. Still, you hold the key.”

“But how—”

“There’ll be time enough for that. You gotta trust me for now. If it was bad shit, I would have been happy to let you be chilled by that mutie bitch last night. No, it’s complicated, but this isn’t the time.”

“Why not?”

“Because whatever LaGuerre has planned is imminent. We’re not far from Jenningsville—another day, mebbe, and we’ll reach the pesthole. That’s when he’ll tell me what he wants.”

“You don’t know?” J.B. watched her face as she shook her head. She was either one hell of a liar, or the trader really hadn’t told her. “I thought he told you everything,” J.B. continued. “Most of the people in this convoy think that you and him are tight.”

She shook her head once more. “Sure they do. Wrong, but I can see why. He knows that I know things. Things about
you people. He’s wanted you for his reason, just like I have for mine. That’s kinda tied us together. But once we get to Jenningsville, that’s where it ends. You do what he wants, it goes off, and he rides away a rich, rich man. It don’t go off, and you buy the farm, not him. You’re new, hired hands. He can plead ignorance, and he’s playing odds. He thinks he can charm and talk his way out of it. And he’s right, mostly ’cause he will have delivered what no one else has, and that makes him someone to be took care of, not just chilled.”

“LaGuerre’s a smart boy,” J.B. mused. “But he’s reckoned without you saying this, right?”

“He doesn’t know how I’ve changed my attitude since I’ve actually worked with you people. He thinks he knows me, but he doesn’t. No one does. That’s how I’ve survived so long. He thinks because I’m pussy, and not a man, he understands me. Led by his dick so much.”

“So what do you suggest we do? I could get Ryan and the others, but that would look kinda suspicious, and right now…”

She sucked her teeth. “No, you do that and it could blow everything. Right now, we’re in the middle of nowhere. We get to the ville, could be that what he has planned could be to our advantage. I don’t want to stop it, I just want you to be aware of it. He’s planning something, and it involves you. Just be ready.”

J.B. nodded. He was uneasy about keeping quiet. Mildred, Ryan, Jak, Doc—this concerned them all. But what was there to tell them? At the moment, Eula knew nothing. So, by extension, neither did the Armorer. And pulling everyone together in an open situation such as this would do nothing more than cause suspicion.

She was right, as far as he could judge. Let her try to find out from the treacherous LaGuerre. Meanwhile, when they reached Jenningsville, he would find a way of alerting his friends without attracting undue attention.

“I’m trusting you, here,” he said to her. “I’ll wait, but if it comes to the point where it puts any of us in any danger other than we’d usually expect…”

“I wouldn’t expect anything else from you,” Eula said, leveling a gaze at him. “Nothing else at all.”

Their conversation was cut short by the approach of Krysty and Ramona.

“J.B., what the hell are you doing sitting on your ass when there’s so much to be done?” Krysty asked in perplexed tones. “That’s not like you.”

“Hell, hon, you ask me they ain’t so much sitting on their asses as about to give them some exposure.” Ramona cackled. “You should find a wag, else you’ll get sunburn on your butts out here,” she added with a wheezing laugh.

Eula shot the dark woman a venomous look, got up and walked off.

“Well, she sure got something up her ass, you know what I’m saying?” Ramona mused as she watched her go.

“You really don’t like her, do you?” Krysty asked.

“No,” Ramona replied bluntly. “There’s something ’bout that girl that sure ain’t right. You should stick with the sister, four-eyes,” she addressed to the Armorer. “That one’ll shoot you in the back soon as go down on you. Probably one for the other.”

J.B. watched Eula go. Should he tell Krysty? Would he have the chance with Ramona standing there?

“C’mon, dickweed, they’ve just hauled Armand’s pride
and joy—and I don’t mean the one on his pants—out the hole. We gotta clean that fucker up and get poor Zarir in the ground.”

Ramona led Krysty away, beckoning to the Armorer to follow.

The moment had passed.

How important would that prove to be?

THERE WERE THINGS that needed to be done before the convoy was finally in a position to move.

The first was the removal of Zarir’s body from the driving seat of the armored wag. Rigor had set in, and it was a grimly humorous sight to behold as he was removed from the rear of the wag in a semisitting, semislumped position, carried out at an absurd angle and placed on the ground.

The men of the convoy had already begun to dig a grave for him. It was time-consuming, and LaGuerre moaned briefly about the delay, but despite the fact that their chilled were usually left to rot and provide carrion, there was something about the manner in which he had bought the farm that caused all of them to take pause and decide that a burial was right.

They dug down three feet, figuring that this would be enough to prevent his being dug up, although the position of his set limbs meant that he was not, in places, as deep as they would have wished. Short of breaking the rigor-stiffened limbs, there was little they could do. After they had lowered him in, Cody said a few brief words. Haltingly, he said all there was to say—none of them had known the
silent wag jockey, but as LaGuerre’s pilot he was one of them. And the way in which he had bought the farm seemed, somehow, stupe.

After he had been covered, the earth mounding up to mark the spot where he lay, they left him and returned to the armored wag.