“Messy eater,” he said.
“You wouldn’t know it now. There. Clean and smart again. Go back inside?”
“Not yet.”
“Want to catch some fresh air?”
“Yeah. Feels overcast.”
Krysty looked up at the cloudless sky, seeing the sprinkling of bright stars. “You’re right,” she said.
“Dull and dismal. Ten-tenths cloud cover. Looks like it might rain later.”
Ryan smiled for the first time since the blinding. “I could feel it.”
“Stay awhile longer?”
“I need a piss.”
“Sure. Least you don’t need me for that. Though I’d be very happy to grab hold and”
“Just point me away from anything, lover. Don’t want to do it on my boots.”
“Right.” She watched him in the filtered moonlight.
“You can see all right? In the dark?” he asked.
“Just about. Go ahead.”
Ryan did it safely, the stream of liquid, silver-black in the moon, splashing against the trunk of a tilted alder, running into the dirt.
RYAN FELL ASLEEP QUICKLY, his body wanting to close down and shut off the horrors of one of the worst days of his life. Krysty had placed their mattress in the upstairs back room. J.B. and Mildred were sleeping in the next room, while Doc, Jak and Dean each had an attic. Johannes Forde had elected to sleep in his wag in the overgrown cottage garden.
The Armorer had discussed with Ryan whether he thought they needed a watch placed. But it was agreed that, as the house was well hidden from the rest of the ville of Bramton, they could reasonably take a chance and go without.
Ryan dreamed that he could see.
He had once known a severely disabled young woman who told him that she dreamed herself whole and well, running through fields of flowers. And she described the cold chill of the waking to grim reality.
He had never quite appreciated the sheer deathly impact of that.
It felt like the small hours and he nudged Krysty, his eye open, seeing only blackness.
“Is there moonlight?” he whispered.
“Yes, there is, lover.” A note of hope entered her voice. “Can you see it?”
“No.” He turned over and tried to get back to sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
Ryan woke several times during the slow, sweating eternity of night. He was aware that his sleep was painfully shallow, plagued with tedious anxiety dreams. He found himself standing beside one of the ancient predark interstates, somewhere in the flatlands of Missouri or Kansas.
The wheat fields had been cropped short, leaving only charred stubble stretching from north to south, from east to west. It was featureless land beneath a sky of unbroken gray with no hint of sunlight.
Ryan was waiting for something. He suspected that it was a war wag that was running hours late. It had been due to pick him up sometime in the previous day or so, but it had failed to arrive. And there was still no sign of it.
In the endless, turgid dream, Ryan had paced back and forth, his feet dragging through soft gray dust. Every now and again he would stop and look around the arid landscape, shading both his good eyes with his right hand, looking for the war wag.
Each time he woke up, Ryan had a strange moment of total disorientation, wondering where be was and what was wrong. And why it was so totally black.
Then he’d remember and turn over, rubbing at his sore right eye, wincing at how tender it felt. The memory of the dull dream would slowly ease back to him, and he’d turn over again, shaking his head.
But each time he fell asleep again, Ryan found himself back in the same place, where the interstate was crossed by a country road, still waiting for the wag that was going to come along and take him away.
TO HIS DISMAY, Ryan found the blindness seemed to have snatched away his sense of time. Normally he would wake up and know, instinctively how much of the night had passed and how much still remained.
Now that was gone.
He lay still, aware that his pulse was faster and more shallow than usual, indicating the stress he was going through. He could hear Krysty sleeping calmly at his side, her breathing slow, steady and regular.
For a moment Ryan almost woke her up, envious of her peace. He wanted a piss, so that could’ve been a good enough excuse to get her to help him.
But he stayed still and silent, eye closed, trying to use the meditation tricks that Krysty had taught him to ease away the worst of the tension.
Sleep came again.
This time Ryan had a road map in his hands, showing the interstate and the maze of smaller highways that danced around it. The colors were exceptionally bright, making him squint against the dazzle. The big map didn’t have a heading to show which state it was, nor were there any names printed of counties or villes.
As Ryan stared down, the colored lines began to move. Slowly at first, like a sun-warmed cottonmouth, then faster, the dark green winding around some of the thin blue highways and choking them out of existence. It was like watching a kaleidoscopic maze of shifting patterns.
Ryan crumpled it angrily into a ball of crushed paper and dropped it in the dirt by his combat boots. But it unfolded itself, crackling noisily, lying flat on the ground before taking to the air like a multihued magical carpet, soaring high over his head on its own mystery tour.
“You can’t look back, son. Not when you’re moving on.” The voice belonged to Ryan’s father, Baron Titus of Front Royal ville, one of the most powerful men in all Deathlands.
But there was nobody there, just a scarecrow standing foursquare in the center of the north forty. It was around 150 paces away from the crossroads.
Ryan looked toward it, hunching his shoulders against a cold blue norther that had come sweeping in over the prairie. The voice had come from the direction of the scarecrow.
He began to walk toward the crucified figure, hearing the charred stubble crunching under his boots, filling the air with the sour smell of burning.
A lone crow had been circling for some minutes, gradually swinging lower. It swooped past Ryan’s face, cawing, close enough for the rancid wing feathers to brush against his face. It perched on the shoulder of the scarecrow, pecking at some of the loose yellow straw that was leaking from the junction of bead and body.
Ryan stood less than twenty paces from the scarecrow. It wore black rubber boots and a suit in a light brown check. The white shirt had a ruffled lace front, and the tie was maroon silk. A large black hat with a drooped brim, like a circuit preacher’s, concealed the face.
The wind tugged at the clothes, making them flap on the wooden skeleton.
“Better to have died yesterday than to live tomorrow,” Baron Titus’s voice said again.
Suddenly Ryan didn’t want to go up and look to see the face beneath the hat.
Over the years Ryan had watched the tattered loops of old vids and carefully read the crumbled shards of predark comics. And he had come across horror stories.
Even though he knew that he was dreaming, it didn’t make the cold fear any easier to bear.
The face of the scarecrow might be his father’s, or one of his brothers’ or Krysty’s.
Perhaps it might even be his own face. That would be the ultimate terror.
The crow sat perkily on the broom-handle shoulders of the tatterdemalion figure, head on one side, yellow beak ajar, bright eyes locked to Ryan’s face.
“Come on then, pretty boy. See the show, my pretty boy. Who’s the pretty boy?” The crow sounded hideously like a trained parrot or cockatoo.
Ryan was only a yard from the scarecrow, the shadow of the large hat still falling over its visage. The wind was freshening, and it suddenly gusted and blew the hat off.
The face wasn’t anyone particular. It was a pumpkin, with a toothy smile neatly carved out and two small holes gouged for the nostrils, as well as two larger sockets to hold the succulent purple grapes that had been pushed in to represent the eyes. Strands of long straw had been stapled to the top of the round orange skull.
The crow hadn’t moved, watching the approaching man through its perky, polished eyes.
As Ryan stared at the hewn face, the bird hopped on top of the head and lowered its beak, neatly plucking out both the grapes, leaving dark-rimmed sockets, raw and naked, brimming with purple juice that trickled across the orange cheeks like fresh blinding blood.
The bird looked at Ryan. “Blind as a bat,” it squawked. “Though bats see fine at night. Fine at night. I see you, you don’t see me. Si , si , amigo. I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice-cream.” It gave a braying laugh and suddenly launched itself into Ryan’s face, it’s brass beak aimed directly at his one good eye.