A bunch of columbines sat on his desk, and a stuffed lark stood on a shelf behind his head.
The teacher was elderly, his clothes disheveled. He had white hair and had cut himself shaving, with dried blood mottling his chin.
He beckoned to Dean, indicating a box that lay across the desk, about four feet in length. As the boy drew nearer, he was aware of the smell of corruption and he stopped.
“Come on, son,” the teacher said with a kindly smile. “You want to learn, don’t you?”
“So my father’ll be proud of me,” the boy replied. “Yeah, I do.”
“Then come and we’ll carry on with the biology lesson.” The teacher picked up a metal pointer with a needle-sharp silver end. “Come closer and you can see what I’m doing.”
Dean dragged his feet, the sound harsh, like flints rubbing together, approaching close enough to see that the box had its lid open, but not quite close enough to make out what it contained.
“Come, come. Let me point out to you the main features of the human anatomy.”
Now Dean could see what was in the boxthe naked body of a very beautiful girl, about thirteen years old, with long blond curls.
“Here is her nose and her mouth, for scenting and eating,” the teacher said, jabbing at each part of her face with the metal pointer. “And these are for seeing.”
He tapped hard on the open, staring eyes with the silvered end of the pointer, which clicked loudly, as though it had made contact with steel.
“No,” Dean said in a calm, conversational tone. “Don’t do that, you cruel bastard.”
Suddenly he screamed, “Don’t!”
The yell woke Ryan, who held his son tightly, until the shaking and the fear had passed and the boy was sleeping quietly again.
Chapter Sixteen
That second night saw Krysty, Doc, J.B., Mildred and Jak not far behind Ryan and Dean.
They had passed the ruins of Basalt, about twenty-five miles from Glenwood Springs.
The walking wasn’t all that tough, despite the occasional hard detour to get around an earth slip, but the altitude was a problem for them all.
Particularly for Doc.
He had a nosebleed late on the first afternoon and a couple more during the second day. The last one was so bad that Mildred made him sit down and rest, his back against a fallen boulder, his head tilted, while she tried to staunch it with his kerchief, which had been soaked in meltwater.
The blood came out in lumps, rather than in a trickle, splashing on the trail, staining his boots, and it took nearly a quarter hour to finally stop the flood, by which time the old man was looking even more pale-skinned than usual.
“Ready to go,” he said.
“Fine,” Mildred said, holding his wrist. “Soon as your pulse stops fluttering and gets someplace close to normal, we can all get on our way.”
“I swear that I do most sincerely pity the poor devils who found themselves your patients, Dr. Wyeth. I have often wondered whether your mysterious freezing ‘accident’ might not have been contrived by a cabal of your colleagues and patients. Had I been one of them on that December day in 2000, I would happily have passed the ice myself.”
“Just stop talking and take it easy, will you? That was a bad nosebleed.”
“Lack of acclimation,” he said. “Give me another few days and I shall be a cross between a young gazelle and spring-heeled Jak himself.”
“I don’t honestly think we’ve got all that many days, Doc,” Krysty said gently. “Should meet with Ryan either tomorrow or the day after. Then comes the hard time. Things could easy slip downhill from then on.”
“How far Fairplay from here?” Jak asked.
Krysty shook her head. “Not sure. I was only in my teens when I left Harmony. I’d guess around fifty miles or so. We’ll go some higher than here.”
“Take us three days, this speed,” the albino commented, looking at the mountains around them.
“Then we’ll meet him in two or three days, Jak. One way or another, we’ll meet up.”
J.B. BLINKED his eyes open, aware of someone moving close to the dead ashes of the previous night’s fire. His right hand felt for the Uzi until he caught the glimpse of the dawn light on the flaming hair.