As Krysty straightened, the women and children encircled her, making cooing noises as they stroked the arms and hem of her fur coat.
“It’s okay, really, it’s okay,” she told them, carefully holding the blaster out of their reach. They wouldn’t be put off. They continued stroking the furry coat sleeves and cooing at her.
When things finally settled down, Ryan and the others retired to the shade of the forest’s edge to watch the rest of the butchering. The village men skinned back the hide at the tail and started hacking out great, foot thick slabs of pale pink flesh. These were passed to the women, who skewered them on ironwood sticks and began char-roasting them over the open fires. The sweet aroma of blackened catfish set the companions’ empty bellies to gurgling.
After a few minutes, the headman walked over to where they sat. He carried an uncapped antifreeze jug, which he handed to Ryan. The one-eyed man sniffed the spout. “Whew!” he said. “That’s powerful staff.”
“It’s brewed from the fruit of the strangler vine,” the village leader told him. “Drink and enjoy yourselves. After she has been served, the feast will begin.”
“Who’s ‘she’?” Krysty asked.
“Sirena,” the leader said. “She told us of your coming, of the great fish, of Chambo’s death on its spine and the eel alive in its gut. Sirena sees all, and knows all.”
“A doomie!” Dean exclaimed.
None of the others said a word. Ryan knew they were all thinking the same thing.
Bullshit.
Though doomies actually existed in Deathlands, the genuine article was as rare as a thirteen year old virgin. Real doomies were a unique race of humans, possibly mutated, possibly not. Each individual was gifted to a varying degree with the second sight, the ability to see past and future events. Usually, however, the folks claiming to have the doomie sight turned out to be con artists or coldheart chillers.
The companions watched as a floppy breasted young woman carried a smoking hunk of fish past them on a carved bone platter. Escorted by the village leader, she disappeared into a hut at the end of the line.
Doc took the antifreeze jug from Ryan and tried a long swallow.
“By the Three Kennedys!” he croaked, wiping his streaming eyes and nose. “A ferment drawn straight from Satan’s piss pot!”
“That good, huh?” J.B. said, accepting the jug.
“Go easy,” Ryan warned.
After a single gasp and shiver producing gulp, J.B. handed the joy juice to Krysty, who whiffed it, made a face and passed it on to Jak without tasting.
In contrast to the companions’ restraint, the male villagers hit their blue jugs hard, and the effects were immediate. Joined by their headman, they started singing, waving their arms and stamping their feet in the mud. Their toneless song was as repetitive as it was nerve grating. And they directed it, and the accompanying rhythmic hip gyrations, toward their guests.
“We are rulers of the forest and the river,” they howled. “We chill the great beasts with their own bones. Our powerful and manly seed will live forever.”
“Now there’s a comforting thought,” Mildred muttered to herself.
At that point, another woman stepped forward and laid down a heaping platter of cooked fish before them. The companions used their bare hands to tear into the char-crusted and still scorching hot meat.
“Tastes like free range snake,” J.B. remarked around a full mouth. He paused to extract a thin fibrous strand from between his teeth. “A hell of a lot more parasites, though,” he said, flicking the three inch serpentine of unchewable tissue into the forest.
The dinner bell ended the village men’s caterwauling. They took seats in the shade across from the companions and started to eat. The women and children sat behind them.
Partway through the feast, one of the men gave the leader a nudge, indicating the young woman waving at him from the doorway of the far hut. The headman, who had washed down the fish course with numerous gulps of strangler wine, rose unsteadily to his feet, and said, “Sirena has been fed. You will pay your respects to her, now.”
Ryan nodded. “It would be our pleasure.”