“What about your people?” Ryan asked.
Robertson shrugged. “Don’t really know. Yardie lost them out in the forest, and we never saw them again, which is why we don’t like to talk of it.” He stopped for a moment, as though considering whether to go on, before reaching a decision.
“There is one thing, though. Whatever happened, one of ours came back. A girl. She couldn’t remember a damn thing, and she was the first to develop that weird shit disease.”
“And the first to die from it,” Krysty added in measured tones.
Robertson nodded. “And we don’t talk of it for one simple reason.”
“Which is?” Ryan questioned.
Robertson looked at him with a steady gaze that belied his usual manner.
“Because she was my only daughter,” he said simply.
Chapter Four
It was a matter of biding their time, although time was the last thing they had to their advantage. On being sent back to their shack, none would speak of what had happened by a tacit agreement, in case they should be heard by any spying sec placed by Baron Robertson. It wasn’t certain he would do that, but in order to carry out any plans they may have, it was necessary to make the baron and his sec men think that they were keeping their heads down and doing as requested.
But for all of them, the uppermost thought in their minds was when they would have a chance to discuss a course of action, and, more importantly, to take that course.
It made for a difficult couple of days, avoiding all mention of the Gate or the Illuminated Ones. In each of their allotted tasks, they carried on as usual, letting up on the question. For Ryan and J.B. it was easy, as on the bar sec patrols they were mostly on their own, and they kept the level of any conversations during the night at little more than passing banter. Likewise, out in the fields the only time that Jak and Dean had to converse with their fellow farmhands was during mealtimes, and then it was easy to keep the talk light, touching on nothing that could be misconstrued.
For Mildred, Doc and Krysty it was harder. In the med building, they were in the same environment as the ville women and Hector for most of the time, and at close quarters. But the ville healer, after being a little suspicious after the first inquiries, had taken their subsequent continuing silence on the matter as a lack of interest rather than a warning off. If he knew anything about their being taken in front of the baron, he neglected to mention it to any of them.
Besides which, both he and the companions had something more pressing to think about: the pox was spreading, and now six people had died. Every bed in the med building was now full, and Hector had others brought into the building from hotels along the drag. Without more staff, those he had were working overtime just to keep the patients comfortable; there was no time to think about searching for some kind of antidote or inoculation. Anyway, as Hector said to Mildred at the end of a long night, as he sat with his head in his hands, “Even if I had time, I’d have no idea how to go about it. I’ve heard that before the nukecaust they could do this, and things you’ve said have made me think this was possible… but I only know the little that I know. I’m the healer here because there isn’t anyone else, and my mother was the healer before me. Doesn’t mean that I really know anything.”
“You’re not doing so badly,” Mildred said sympathetically. She could see in his drawn, pallid face and dark ringed eyes a man who cared about what he did and felt helpless in the face of what seemed almost insurmountable odds. She could sympathize because she knew how he felt, and she knew that he would soon be left to cope alone. But it was the only way they could even hope to get to the root of the evil and destroy it—for evil was what she felt it to be. Since awakening to the vastly changed world of the Deathlands, Mildred had almost forgotten about such simplistic notions as good and evil…but this was another matter entirely. She could almost taste the evil behind this revival of a disease thought wiped out in another era.