From the Heart of Darkness (2 page)

Determination—and a few good breaks—have carried many a struggling writer through difficult times. Drake got an agent, a newcomer from Minneapolis named Kirby McCauley, who joined several of Drake's fellow writers in urging him to make use of his Viet Nam experience in his fiction, to write of modern day horrors rather than those from a period with little market clout—to try science fiction, perhaps. Drake reluctantly followed advice, and his career abruptly shifted from that of a promising amateur to full-fledged professional.

A series of fantasy and science fiction stories set in Viet Nam quickly sold to
F&SF, Analog,
and
Galaxy
—markets that had previously rejected all of his submissions. Extrapolating the Viet Nam experience into the future and onto other planets, Drake found a ready market for the Hammer's Slammers cycle of science fiction stories—space opera with realistic gore. Slowly emerging as a name author from the “and others” ranks, Drake now discovered a market for his contemporary horror stories as well as his beloved historical fantasies. In addition to the magazines, Drake's stories came into increasing demand for anthologies of original fiction, both here and in England. Stuart David Schiff, editor-publisher of the premier fantasy/horror magazine,
Whispers,
was not merely content with buying some of Drake's best fiction, and he tapped Drake as his assistant editor. Drake found further involvement with the small press field as a partner in Carcosa, a fantasy/horror limited edition publisher located in Chapel Hill. With the publication in 1979 of his first two books,
Hammer's Slammers
and
The Dragon Lord,
the inevitable conflict of careers came to a head.

Any writer who is serious about his work and who has another career eventually has to make a commitment: either he will write full time as a career, or he will relegate his writing to the status of a sometime hobby. It probably drove the final coffin nails in Drake's law career that his friends included one writer who had been writing full time for half a century and another writer who had turned his back on a medical career. In summer of 1980 Drake left his position as deputy town attorney and took a job as part-time bus driver—this to pay the bills while he wrote. It was a gamble, but a successful one. In autumn of 1981 Drake drove his last bus and turned to writing on a full-time basis.

An extremely versatile writer, Drake seems as much at ease with his material whether it's fifth century Britain or today's cold war espionage or some future colonial war on a distant planet. His writing reflects his many hobbies and interests—firearms, motorcycles, high tech hardware, ancient and modern warfare, dinosaurs, classical history. Drake owns an extensive library of specialized reference works as well as thousands of science fiction and fantasy books. The fact that he is equally enthusiastic over his set of Arkham House books and his complete run of
Planet Stories
and his collected novels of Sven Hassell is a fair indication of his orientations as a writer. Nor is all his research second hand. Drake is a crack pistol marksman, and his motorcycles include the 108-horsepower Suzuki GS1100E.

His style is straightforward and economical, somewhat unusual in a genre overladen with purple prose, and Drake professes a debt to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. One unfailing trademark of Drake's writing is that it always is well researched—in point of fact, obsessively accurate in those areas of particular interest and expertise. While Drake has mastered the intricacies of plot and characterization over the course of some fifty published stories and half a dozen books, his overriding concern remains
get it right.

Drake's fiction usually has a very strong impact upon the reader. Some readers find his work extremely unpleasant—enough so to write angry letters to the editor or inveigh against him in reviews. His story, “Smokie Joe,” originally published in the British anthology,
More Devil's Kisses,
is partially credited with Scotland Yard's seizure of the book and jailing of its publisher. On the other hand, two of his stories (“The Red Leer” and “Best of Luck”) have been optioned for television production, and
Hammer's Slammers
has attracted enough of a cult following to be adapted by Mayfair into a board game. Readers enamored of lovely unicorns and romantic quests, or who insist upon the inevitable triumph of Good over Evil had best leave Drake's fiction strictly alone. Drake's insistence upon accuracy of detail extends to gruesome surety that swordcuts bleed and that bullets make rather nasty holes in things. Depending upon one's personal philosophy, one might argue that Drake's determinedly pessimistic attitude toward humanity, separately or as a race, is a further extension of his obsession with realism. Drake is not an author readers are likely to feel neutral toward; either they enjoy his writing, or they react with heartfelt aversion.

From the Heart of Darkness
is an excellent introduction to Drake's work, offering examples of his Vettius and Dama stories, historical pieces, Viet Nam horrors, contemporary nightmares, and bleak visions of the future. It is also an excellent collection of horror stories from an author who has paid his dues. These stories may frighten you and they may turn your stomach, but you are not going to forget them—and that is the hallmark of successful horror fiction.

MEN LIKE US

There was a toad crucified against them at the head of the pass. Decades of cooking in the blue haze from the east had left it withered but incorruptible. It remained, even now that the haze was only a memory. The three travellers squatted down before the talisman and stared back at it.

“The village can't be far from here,” Smith said at last. “I'll go down tomorrow.”

Ssu-ma shrugged and argued, “Why waste time? We can all go down together.”

“Time we've got,” said Kozinski, playing absently with his ribs as he eyed the toad. “A lot of the stories we've been told come from ignorance, from fear. There may be no more truth to this one than to many of the others. We have a duty, but we have a duty as well not to disrupt needlessly. We'll wait for you and watch.”

Smith chuckled wryly. “What sort of men would there be in the world,” he said, “if it weren't for men like us?”

All three of them laughed, but no one bothered to finish their old joke.

*   *   *

The trail was steep and narrow. The stream was now bubbling twenty feet below, but in springtime it would fill its sharp gorge with a torrent as cold as the snows that spawned it. Coming down the valley, Smith had a good view of Moseby when he had eased around the last facet of rock above the town. It sprawled in the angle of the creek and the river into which the creek plunged. In a niche across the creek from the houses was a broad stone building, lighted by slit windows at second-story level. Its only entrance was an armored door. The building could have been a prison or a fortress were it not for the power lines running from it, mostly to the smelter at the riverside. A plume of vapor overhung its slate roof.

One of the pair of guards at the door of the powerplant was morosely surveying the opposite side of the gorge for want of anything better to do. He was the first to notice Smith. His jaw dropped. The traveller waved to him. The guard blurted something to his companion and threw a switch beside the door.

What happened then frightened Smith as he thought nothing in the world could frighten him again: an air-raid siren on the roof of the powerplant sounded, rising into a wail that shook echoes from the gorge. Men and women darted into the streets, some of them armed; but Smith did not see the people, these people, and he did not fear anything they could do to him.

Then the traveller's mind was back in the present, a smile on his face and nothing in his hands but an oak staff worn by the miles of earth and rock it had butted against. He continued down into the village, past the fences and latrines of the nearest of the houses. Men with crossbows met him there, but they did not touch him, only motioned the traveller onward. The rest of the townsfolk gathered in an open area in the center of the town. It separated the detached houses on the east side from the row of flimsier structures built along the river. The latter obviously served as barracks, taverns, and brothels for bargees and smelter workers. The row buildings had no windows facing east, and even their latrines must have been dug on the river side. A few people joined the crowd from them and from the smelter itself, but only a few.

“That's close enough,” said the foremost of those awaiting the traveller. The local was a big man with a pink scalp. It shone through the long wisps of white hair which he brushed carefully back over it. His jacket and trousers were of wool dyed blue so that it nearly matched the shirt of ancient polyester he wore over it. “Where have you come from?”

“Just about everywhere, one time or another,” Smith answered with an engaging grin. “Dubuque, originally, but that was a long time ago.”

“Don't play games with the Chief,” hissed a somewhat younger man with a cruel face and a similar uniform. “You came over the mountains; and
nobody
comes from the Hot Lands.”

Chief of Police, Smith marveled as he connected the title and the shirts now worn as regalia. Aloud he said, “When's the last time anybody from here walked over the mountains? Ever?”

Bearded faces went hard. The traveller continued, “A hundred years ago, two hundred, it was too hot for you to go anywhere that side of the hills … but not now. Now—maybe I'll never sire children of my own, but I never needed that, I needed to see the world. And I have done that, friends.”

“Strip him,” the Chief said flatly.

Smith did not wait for the grim-looking men to force him. He shrugged off his pack and handed it to the nearest of the guards armed with crossbows and hand-forged swords. He said, “Gently with it, friend. There's some of it that's fragile, and I need it to trade for room and board the next while.” He began to unhook his leather vest.

Six of the men besides the Chief wore the remnants of police uniforms over their jackets. They were all older, not lean warriors like the crossbowmen—but they carried firearms. Five of them had M16 rifles. The anodized finish of the receivers had been polished down to the aluminum by ages of diligent ignorance. The sixth man had a disposable rocket launcher, certain proof that the villagers here had at some time looted an army base—or a guard room.

“Just a boy from the Midwest,” Smith continued pleasantly, pulling out the tails of his woolen shirt. “I wanted to see New York City, can you believe that? But we'll none of us live forever, will we?”

He laid the shirt, folded from habit, on his vest and began unlacing his boots of caribou leather. “There's a crater there now, and the waves still glow blue if there's even an overcast to dim the sun. Your skin prickles.”

The traveller grinned. “You won't go there, and I won't go there again; but I've seen it, where the observation deck of the World Trade Towers was the closest mortal man got to heaven with his feet on man's earth.…”

“We've heard the stories,” the Chief grunted. He carried a stainless-steel revolver in a holster of more recent vintage.

“Trousers?” Smith asked, cocking an eyebrow at the women in dull-colored dresses.

The Chief nodded curtly. “When a man comes from the Hot Lands, he has no secrets from us,” he said. “Any of us.”

“Well, I might do the same in your case,” the traveller agreed, tugging loose the laces closing the woolen trousers, “but I can tell you there's little enough truth to the rumors of what walks the wastelands.” He pulled the garment down and stepped out of it.

Smith's body was wiry, the muscles tight and thickly covered by hair. If he was unusual at all, it was in that he had been circumcized, no longer a common operation in a world that had better uses for a surgeon's time. Then a woman noticed Smith's left palm, never hidden but somehow never clearly seen until that moment. She screamed and pointed. Others leveled their weapons, buzzing as a hive does when a bear nears it.

Very carefully, his face as blank as the leather of his pack, Smith held his left hand toward the crowd and spread his fingers. Ridges of gnarled flesh stood out as if they had been paraffin refrozen a moment after being liquified. “Yes, I burned it,” the traveller said evenly, “getting too close to something the—something the Blast was too close to. And it'll never heal, no … but it hasn't gotten worse, either, and that was years ago. It's not the sort of world where I could complain to have lost so little, hey?”

“Put it down,” the Chief said abruptly. Then, to the guard who was searching the pack, “Weapons?”

“Only this,” the guard said, holding up a sling and a dozen dense pebbles fitted to its leather pocket.

“There's a little folding knife in my pants pocket,” Smith volunteered. “I use it to skin the rabbits I take.”

“Then put your clothes on,” the Chief ordered, and the crowd's breath eased. “You can stay at the inn, since you've truck enough to pay for it—” he nodded toward the careful pile the guard had made of Smith's trading goods—“and perhaps you can find girls on Front Street to service you as well. There's none of that east of the Assembly here, I warn you. Before you do anything else, though, you talk to me and the boys in private at the Station.”

The traveller nodded and began dressing without embarrassment.

The Police and their guards escorted Smith silently, acting as if they were still uncertain of his status. Their destination was a two-story building of native stone. It had probably been the Town Hall before the Blast. It was now the Chief's residence as well as the headquarters of the government. Despite that, the building was far less comfortable than many of the newer structures which had been designed to be heated by stoves and lighted by lamps and windows. In an office whose plywood panelling had been carefully preserved—despite its shoddy gloominess—the governing oligarchs of the town questioned Smith.