“Toadstool,” Boldt corrected. “Poisonous rather than simply hallucinogenic. A great degree of skill is necessary in order to keep from crossing that thin line of death.” He walked closer to her, and the shadows peeled away from him, revealing the .44 pistol he had snugged in shoulder leather. “I do hope you’ll prove more civil now that you’ve had a chance to vent your rancor. I would like to talk to you, especially now that I know you’re from the predark times.”
Mildred just studied the man.
“But,” he said softly, “I am just as unforgiving as Bodb. And I am the Prince here at Wildroot. There is no one to say me nay and stay my hand.” He raised his eyebrows. “Do we understand each other?”
“Sure,” Mildred said. “Clear as a goddamn bell. But you haven’t told me why I should worry about dying later instead of dying now.”
“Because,” Boldt said, “I’ve not decided whether you should die at all. Yet. You amuse me, and you represent a gateway, of sorts, to the past. A link to the world my father knew and hated.” He snapped his fingers.
Two guards stepped into the room, dressed in green but wearing silver-worked patches on their blouses. One of them drew a knife and slashed at the ropes that bound her to the chair.
“Come,” Boldt said imperiously, turning his back and striding down the hollowed-out hallway. Another guard stepped in front of him, uncovering the bull’s-eye of a large lantern and banishing the darkness in the blue glow.
Mildred rubbed circulation back into her arms as needles of pain tracked through her legs when she stood. She wanted to ask about J.B., Doc, Ryan and the others, but she had the feeling the man wouldn’t reply. Instead, she followed.
NEW LONDON RESEMBLED a growth sprouting out of dead scars. What Ryan guessed was the center of the ville featured leaning and broken stone buildings sometimes as high as five and six stories. Most of them had sheared off somewhere around their midpoints, leaving broken and blunted fangs pointed skyward.
He studied the ville from the back of the jeep as Gehrig lit another cigar. Ryan felt all talked out from the past two hours of constant grilling by the raider captain. The jeep continued following the well-traveled dirt road leading into New London, passing horse-drawn wags and ox carts going both ways. Most of the wag drivers and cart drivers got over readily enough, but none of them appeared especially glad to see Gehrig or his men.
“Thorpe started from survivors gathering in the ruins,” Gehrig said over the roar of the jeep’s transmission. He shifted in the seat, putting a foot up against the dashboard and heaving out a long streamer of smoke. “Right after the nukestorm. When I was a kid, I talked to some of the old men who lived through those times as small brats themselves. Children were considered a liability in those days. Not many of them made it. But the ones who did, mate, they can tell some stories.”
Ryan ran his eye over the area. A ten-foot wall surrounded the ville, put together with metal scraps, stone and wood. Barbed wire curled along the top of it.
“Not much food to be had here for a while,” the raider captain said. “Thorpe’s founders turned to cannibalism for a time. Started ‘finding’ a lot of dead kids who’d perished from one misadventure or another. According to the old-timers, it was easier for a young sprout to have a misadventure than some middle-aged, distrusting soul armed with a blaster of his own.”
The jeep rumbled across the road and came to a stop at a heavily guarded checkpoint. Steel barricades blocked the entrance.
Glancing up, Ryan saw the guard posts were heavily occupied. “Ville seems capable of supporting a lot of people now.”
“Yeah,” Gehrig agreed. “Took some time. Way things worked around here, most of the foodstuffs were canned and dried right here. Close enough to the sea that fish was a staple, but there was a number of bios weapons that got ruptured in the nukestorm. Leftover bastard shit from World War II that was never claimed because of international treaties about the stocking of such things, then couldn’t be gotten rid of easily without embarrassment. When the bios ruptured, they poured mists and fogs down into the low places that lasted for months and sometimes years. Wiped out the fishermen, and the folk left over had to relearn most everything. Drove all of the fish deeper out into the seas, too.”