“That was it,” he said. “I wanted us to understand each other.”
“Got you.”
Garrison said no more as they turned and walked back at a relaxed pace. Some kind of night creatures made noise in the trees that was more like a rhythmic whining or moaning than anything else. He knew that wasn’t what Jak had complained of. They were natural night sounds; they’d never fool Jak Lauren.
Ryan found himself liking the Soulardville sec boss. It was a novel enough feeling to surprise him. He hoped it didn’t come down to them squaring off. Liking the man and being unwilling to chill him at need were two very different things to Ryan Cawdor. Garrison wasn’t one of Ryan’s crew. That meant he was one of
them.
But if it came to throwing down there was no certainty how it would play out between them. That was what bothered him.
A pounding on the frame of their front door yanked them from what Mildred, remembering her residency days, called, “The sleep of the just—the just exhausted.”
Ryan slipped right into deep sleep at every opportunity, but at any sign of threat he came full-on awake between one heartbeat and the next, ready to act or react on the instant.
Now was no exception. He was actually crouching by his pallet, ready to jump in any direction, before he was aware of even moving. From the pallet beside his Krysty was uncoiling, more like a waking cat than something spring-loaded like her mate.
Krysty flowed toward the door, wearing only a long pale green T-shirt. She tugged the shirt discreetly down before opening the inner door. Several young people stood waiting on the porch.
“Yes?” Krysty said.
The one nearest the door, a young man dressed in a T-shirt and baggy shorts, just gaped at her. A black girl of perhaps fifteen elbowed him aside.
“Pull your tongue back in your head, Henry,” she said. “You’ll step on it. We brought breakfast for you, ma’am.”
“‘Ma’am’?” Krysty repeated in a bemused tone.
Through the slot the youngsters passed covered pots containing bacon and sausage and scrambled eggs, a plate
of yesterday’s bread, sliced and toasted golden. They also handed in a stack of ceramic plates.
“Well, well,” Mildred said, standing up and stretching. “This is a whole lot different from the last time we got fed in here. That actually smells good!”
“Yeah,” Ryan grunted. A muscle twitched in his cheek as he remembered slab-faced Lonny hawking in their food. He still hadn’t figured that one out.
He knew what to do about it. The only questions were
when
and
how.
“Smells great,” Jak said, helping take in the containers of steaming food.
“Eat fast,” the girl said. “Ceremony begins in an hour.” Despite her air of juvenile self-importance, her dark eyes seemed unnaturally wide and there was something strange in her manner. Something strained.
As the companions sat down in a circle and began to ladle the good-smelling food, obviously fresh-cooked in the baronial palace’s own capacious kitchen, Doc’s long haggard face grew thoughtful.
“Why am I so forcibly reminded,” he asked the air, “of the expression, ‘the condemned ate heartily’?”
W
HEN PRESSED
by Mildred, Doc passed the crack off as a joke. But Ryan was forcibly reminded of the phrase himself when the next peremptory hammering on the door frame led to Mildred opening the door on Garrison and no fewer than half a dozen of his sec men, each carrying a shotgun or carbine.
“What’s the occasion?” she asked.
“Lottery day,” he said. “You’re attending the ceremony.”
“Lottery?” Mildred asked. “That takes me right back…don’t we need to buy tickets?”
One of the sec men snickered. Turning his head fractionally, Garrison shot him a look that shut him off dead as a shot to his head. Instead sweat broke out all over his suddenly ashen face.
“As outlanders,” Garrison said, “you’re exempt. Be glad. Now, shake it up. We don’t want to keep Brother Joseph waiting.”
Although the companions had all undressed at least partially for sleep, to beat the humid heat as best they could, they had finished dressing hurriedly after they ate. Nor had they enjoyed their meal, despite the strong temptation to linger over the unaccustomed richness and deliciousness of it all. For reasons having not a rad-blasted thing to do with the convenience of Bro Joe or Soulardville they wanted to be ready to roll on a moment’s notice.
The day was clear but for a few white clouds rolling east over the big river. Down here in the ville there was only a slight breeze. The sun wasn’t yet halfway up the sky. But it stung Ryan’s cheek when they passed out of the shade of a linden tree into the street.
The plaza was thronged. Ryan guessed there had to have been nearly five hundred people packed in there elbow-to-elbow. It took a surprisingly little amount of room to hold a crowd that big when it was that dense. The mob spilled down the big main street and the shady side lanes, even half a block down toward the house where they had spent the night confined.
But despite being jammed in the plaza like Vienna sausages in a can, the good folk of Soulardville gave way pretty quickly when Garrison led his crew straight into them keeping the five companions carefully surrounded.
“Like a hot knife through butter,” Doc murmured.
A path opened clear to the center of the plaza, which Ryan observed to be devoid of spectators. In the middle of
it the mysterious slab had had its cloth covering removed. What they saw was a big thick chunk of concrete with raw busted edges; it had to have been eight feet by ten and at least a foot thick. It had to weigh tons.
“It must have taken an almighty effort to bring that here,” Doc said. “What for, I wonder.”
“Got a feeling we’re about to find out,” Ryan said.
“Those rebars sticking up,” Mildred said, nodding toward rust-red lengths of metal jutting from the slab. “They’ve been bent so they’re like hooks.”
“That took some doing, too,” Krysty said.
Garrison led them to a spot roughly in front of the baronial palace. A combination of sec men and Joseph’s tie-dyed acolytes seemed to have been holding it open for them. The crowd seemed no more minded to tangle with the unarmed, fresh-faced young men in the colorful T-shirts than their grim black-clad counterparts with the blasters and hardwood nightsticks.
No sooner had the companions taken up position, right at the edge of the ten-foot-clear circle around the peculiar tilted slab so they had an unobstructed view, than a chant went up: “Jo-
seph,
Jo-
seph,
Jo-
seph!
”
The man himself emerged from his storefront temple. This day he wore a white shirt and over it a long smock not unlike a whitecoat’s white coat. Except it had been dyed streakily in a whole rainbow of colors—red and orange and yellow, green, blue, purple, even black and gray and brown. Or mebbe it had been woven in all those colors; Ryan didn’t know enough about the making and coloring of fabric to make a judgment. The self-proclaimed holy man wore loose pants of unbleached muslin and his usual sandals. He carried a staff with a large head on it that seemed of all things to be made up of scavenged green
circuit boards. Little LED light glowed from it like red and green eyes at seeming random.
“What the heck’s that thing?” Mildred asked.
“No doubt an object of religious significance,” Doc said quietly. “Possibly talismanic. When I was confined in your time, dear lady, I chanced to read about something called a cargo cult in the islands of the South Seas, where natives sought to bring back the goods that had flowed to them so freely during your Second World War, by creating mock-ups of landing strips, and making aircraft out of crates. Perhaps we’re about to witness a ceremony of similar import, to try to recall the prosperity of predark times, or assure a goodly supply of salvage.”
One of the sec men turned around and glared. Doc favored him with a bland smile. Mildred couldn’t refrain from muttering under her breath, “It wasn’t
my
World War. I wasn’t even born.”
Brother Joseph reached the cleared space around the platform…altar, Ryan found he was thinking of it now. Without hesitation the guru strode forward and climbed up to the top of it, finding a strong standing position immediately, with the ease of long practice, despite the canted surface.
“My children,” he called in that voice like an old-style church bell tolling from the steeple. “People of Soulardville. Seekers after truth. You know why we are here.”
Instead of shouting a ritual reply the crowd fell dead silent. Brother Joseph tapped the base of his staff three times on the blacktop at his feet. Hard hollow raps echoed among the building faces.
“Years ago,” he cried, “the peace of Soulardville was broken by a terrible menace from the skies. A horror that
haunted all the ruins of St. Lou. It haunts them to this day!”
Ryan was aware of his companions’ eyes on him. He shrugged.
No idea,
he mouthed.
“The circle of daily life was broken. No longer could farmers work their plots. Carters could no longer move goods. Friend could no longer visit friend, daughter no longer visit mother. No longer could the people assemble together to seek their strength in one another. In community.
“I was among you at that time. I remember when the horror of the screamwings arrived. The terrifying attacks. The hideous wreckage they left behind, which had been healthy, vibrant human beings before the winged horrors descended.”
“I don’t think I like where this is going,” Mildred muttered.
Ryan glanced around, a bit concerned at attracting attention. But everybody was staring at Brother Joseph as if he were telling the way to the magic jolt tree.
“I believe you speak for us all,” Doc said, sotto voce.
“Long and hard I prayed. Meditated and prayed. Prayed for guidance from the divine principle and all the spirits of the earth, the fire, the water, and especially the sky. And then was revealed to me—the compact!
“I went forth alone into the wilderness of broken concrete and steel. There I met the King Screamwing himself. He whose majestic and terrible form you may see wheeling even now against the blue vault of the sky!”
He thrust his staff up into the sky toward the north, above downtown. The crowd gasped.
Sure enough, a great winged shape circled lazily, high above the rubble of the great city.
“Triple-huge!” Jak breathed, eyes wide.
“What does he mean ‘King Screamwing’?” Doc asked. “They are animals. Mutant animals, to be sure, vicious brutes, by and large. But a king? Preposterous!”
“It could be he’s the dominant male,” Mildred observed.
“Let’s hear what the man has to say,” Ryan rasped.
Not that that posed any problem. The soft-voiced conversation had taken place while Brother Joseph stood poised, pointing at the monster in the sky. The assembled Soulardites stared at it with fear and terrible anticipation. Something didn’t taste right on Ryan’s tongue. Mebbe he was just smelling their fear. It wasn’t the right kind of fear.
“They’re not afraid of being attacked, lover,” Krysty said. “It’s something else.”
“I brought you back—the compact!” Brother Joseph cried. He lowered his staff with another ringing impact of its butt on the ground.
“Since that time the screamwings have left us in peace. Do I speak true?”
“You speak true, Bro Joe!” somebody shouted from the crowd.
Shill, Ryan thought, glancing toward the outcry and spotting a gaudy sunburst pattern. But the rest of the crowd instantly took up the cry.
Brother Joseph gestured with his staff and the crowd shut up again. “But everything in life has its price,” his said, pitching his voice low, although Ryan had no trouble hearing it. He reckoned he’d have heard it about as clearly had he been way off at the back of the crowd, instead of twenty feet away. The man was good. He had to give him that.
“And so we pay the price. Each of us a share. Each of us a chance. Each of us, all of us, entered in the lottery.”
Something ran through the crowd in an almost tangible ripple. The word had that powerful an effect. Ryan could actually see the whole mob flinch as one.
“And now—” Joseph rang the butt of his staff four times against the concrete at his feet “—bring forth this week’s lucky winner!”
“Winner! Winner!” the crowd began to chant.
To the east it parted. A group of six of Brother Joseph’s huskiest young male acolytes approached, clustered around a young woman. She had long dark brown hair that hung in curtains that hid her down-turned face. She wore a simple lightweight smock of brown with black stripes. Her hands were behind her back. Her feet were bare.
Krysty gasped. “She’s just a girl!”
Ryan saw it was true. Even if he couldn’t see her face, the slim figure—far from fully developed into womanhood, even the way she walked—told the story well enough.
Jak shook his head as if clearing water from his hair. He clapped his hands over the ears. Their escorts looked at him funny, but they said nothing. Only steered a little farther clear of the albino teen, as if afraid whatever kind of crazy he had was catching.
“Jak, what on earth are you doing?” Krysty asked, as quietly as she could and still be heard above the rising noise of the throng that filled the street ahead of them.
“Whine. Triple-high. Heard yesterday in circle ruin. Back now.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Hurts.”
Krysty looked at Ryan. He shook his head.
“None of the rest of us hear anything,” the redhead said.
“Whose fault that?”
The acolytes led the girl to the tilted slab. She raised her head and looked around fearfully, her eyes glistening,
cheeks flushed. Krysty was right: she couldn’t have been more than fourteen.
The crowd kept up its chant: “Winner! Winner!”
Brother Joseph stepped carefully backward off the slab. The acolytes hustled the slim girl up onto it and knelt. Quickly they secured a short, coarse rope to her slender right ankle. Then they tied it securely to one of the rebars curved into hooks. With one quick rip, her smock was torn away by one of the acolytes.
“It’s an altar,” Mildred said. “Oh, sweet Mary, what are these bastards doing?”
“And now,” Brother Joseph cried, “the price! The awful price is paid, that all of us may live and thrive!”
He pointed at the sky to the north again. The crowd looked. Someone screamed.
The screamwings came.