“Sure.”
Ryan took the panga and approached the dying creature. The scabbie tried to grab at his ankles with its blood-stained clawed fingers. The one-eyed man dodged easily, feinting to the right, then quickly switching the eighteen-inch blade to his other hand, cutting down at the exposed throat of the mutie.
The sharp steel sliced through a nest of deep sores along the side of its neck, before cutting open the carotid artery, spilling the blood in a pattering fountain of crimson.
The sound of applause made everyone swing around to the left side of the dreary, blood-sodden clearing, confronting the lone man who had crept silently up on them under cover of the brief and savage firefight.
He was tall, well over six feet, but skinny as a lath. He had long blond hair tied back in a kind of pony-tail with a scarlet ribbon. His neatly trimmed beard and mustache were both white. The man’s complexion was pink and rosy, setting off his piercing blue eyes.
He wore buckskins, fringed across the shoulders and down both arms. Riding boots, dappled with fresh mud, reached almost to the knee.
“I swear it’s the ghost of Buffalo Bill Cody,” Doc whispered.
Ryan noticed that the stranger was wearing a beautiful pair of matched Navy Colts, with flashy mother-of-pearl butts. A brass-hilted cavalry sword trailing on the left hip completed the dazzling ensemble.
He had been gently clapping his gauntleted hands together. Now, with everyone looking at him, he stopped. A fawn Stetson sat on his head, and he swept it off with an actor’s flourish, bowing to Ryan and the others.
“An excellent performance, ladies and gentlemen. If only I had my cameras with me to record it all for posterity, I could have toured it for many a long year. Such courage. Such grace under pressure. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Johannes Forde and I make films.”
Chapter Seven
The campfire crackled brightly, sending a curling pillar of gray-white smoke circling into the evening air, filling the stillness with the scent of apple and cherry wood. An old black caldron hung on a tripod in the heart of the flames, its contents steaming and bubbling.
The fight with the muties had been only a hundred paces away from an overgrown two-lane blacktop that ran roughly from east to west. Alongside it were the remnants of an orchard, with fallen trees everywhere.
Johannes Forde had led them to it, through a screen of alders to where his wag waited, a pair of bay mares chewing quietly at the long grass. His name was emblazoned on the side of the canvas, advertising his trade Maker of Films for Every Occasion.
A rare occupation in Deathlands.
He explained while they waited for the gator stew to cook that he had found an enormous cache of 16 mm cameras with lenses and miles of film stock, with several projectors and screens.
“It was in a tumbled barn, a country mile or so to the south of old Interstate 20, a good distance north of us here, in a small town that no longer had a name. Streets of tumbled tar-paper shotgun shacks. Several houses looked like they’d once belonged to the pre-dark wealthy.”
He got up and stirred at the stew with a ladle. The mix of vegetables and white strips of meat was simmering gently, its delicious aroma rising from the pot.
“You have old films?” Mildred asked. “The big stars like Clint and Kevin and Macaulay and Claudia?”
Forde shook his head, the shadows playing across the sharp planes of his cheeks, dancing off the bright blue eyes. “No, Dr. Wyeth. Most of that had been converted to video, and it’s almost impossible to find working players these days. Last vid I saw that was nearly complete was” He calculated on his fingers, lips moving. “Must be fifteen years ago, up near Richmond. It had some wonderful stars in it. Jack Nicholson. Bruce Bern. Harry Dean Stanton. I have read much on the ancient movies, and they were three of the finest. About a gang of bikers. Never knew the title as the lead ten minutes was missing, but I can lay my hand on my heart and say without hesitation that it was one of the worst movies that I have ever seen.”
“You actually make what used to be called ‘home movies,’ do you?” Doc asked.
“Yes, I do. I still have dozens of hours of film left and the equipment for developing and editing and projecting them.”
“Who pays?” Ryan asked, picking at his teeth with a long thorn off of a wild brier rose. “Barons from villes?”
“Yes.”
Doc snorted. “Those who can afford the jack for it. Like the painters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Most of them did dull portraits of even duller people. The nobs. Those who could afford the fees.”
Forde nodded at the old man. “Good to meet up with someone with a passable education. All of you got reading and writing?” Everyone nodded. “That’s fine to know. Average ville has about a dozen readers and writers and counters. If that. Some places there’s only the baron and his family. And their tame priests.”
“You got films we can see?” Jak asked.
“Guess so. Y’all be interested in my doing some filming of you? Won’t cost much. Or we can trade. See some of the finest blasters I ever laid eyes on.”
“Not bad weapons yourself,” J.B. commented. “Looks like you’ve had them pair of matched Navy Colts rechambered for a .38.”
“Right. Sharp eyes, Mr. Dix. Would weaponry be your specialty, by any chance?”
“It would.”
“And you’re in the trading and the traveling line, you say?” The question was asked by Forde with a wry grin that showed his disbelief without actually calling Ryan’s short explanation into doubt.
“That’s what we say.” Ryan stared at him, waiting until the elegant stranger dropped his gaze. “Anything beyond that falls into the box marked Our Business.”
Forde shrugged, holding out his hands like a traveling huckster. “Fine, fine. Forgive me for asking. Never been down this part of the world before. Sorry if I gave offense.”
Jak answered his apology. “Bayou folks keep open eyes and closed mouths.”
Forde nodded. “I understand, Mr. Lauren.”
“Call me Jak.”
“Of course. And I am Johannes” He paused a long moment. “To my friends.”
“Good to meet you” Ryan allowed his pause to stretch to more than match Forde’s. “Johannes.”
The filmmaker laughed. “I’m sure that the stew’s ready for eatin’ right now. Let’s get to it.”
JOHANNES FORD WAS a first-rate cook. The alligator tasted like the finest corn-fed chicken, tender and flavorsome. The mix of vegetables, including potatoes, collard greens and delicious mashed rutabagas, was scented with a variety of herbs and spices, including some nutmeg that Forde measured out of a tiny glass vial as carefully as if it had been gold dust.
“Can’t get it these days,” he said. “Always on the lookout for a predark grocer’s, but I haven’t found one untouched for six years. And I’ve been looking real hard.”
“Unusual to find a man who likes cooking,” Krysty commented, “and who’s good at it.”
“Lady, I never had the time,” Ryan replied, offering his earthenware dish for a second helping. “Though I gotta admit it’s good.”
Forde was leaning his back against one of the big wag wheels, lighting up a small black cigar. He blew a smoke ring, sighing. “Life is good at times like this. To meet fellow outlanders and travelers. Men and women who know the main roads and the thin blue highways of Deathlands.”
“How long’ve you been riding along the black-tops?” J.B. asked.
“I first saw the light of day in New Haven. Poppa was a fisherman. Caught the last boat west when a giant devil crab bit him in half. I was let me see I was about twelve when that happened. Momma liked company, after he was gone. Mebbe before, as well. Mate company. Her only son found himself in the way, so he lit out running and never stopped. That’ll be twenty-five years ago come the equinox.”
“And you’ve been doing this filming all this time?” Mildred asked.
“Lord save you, no. It was only a few years ago that I stumbled upon the film making material that has been my salvation. Before that I was lost and godless, a man who lived by the turn of a card or the roll of a dice.” He paused, blowing another perfect smoke ring. “Or the quickness of my finger on the trigger. Surviving was mistakes not made.”
Ryan nodded understandingly. “And you got hopes of doing some filming in the villes around here?”
“That’s the idea, friend Cawdor. Any of you know this part of the world? Be there monsters here?”
“There be monsters everywhere,” Doc replied. “And most of them walk tall on two feet.”
“Very true. By God, but that’s true.”