James Axler – Deathlands 35 – Skydark

After a few minutes the lion put its chin on its front paws. A little later it began to sputter and snort. Its breathing slowed; the purring continued. Jak let go of a horn and reached out to touch its ear. It was pointed, fat and furry. The teenager suddenly found it difficult to keep his eyes open. His every muscle felt drained and limp. He knew he had to get up and find a way to

kill the cat before it recovered. But he needed to rest for just a minute.

Soon they were both snoring in the dark.

“STUFF AND DAMN taradiddle!” Doc’s angry voice drifted, disembodied and ghostly, through the blackness of the WiHie ville cooler

“This is by far the vilest jail in which I’ve ever passed a night,” he announced in a half-strangled croak. “Fouler by far than the infamous torture dungeon of the late and unlamented Baron Jordan Teague, of Mocsin ville. More loathsome than the human ter-rarium of Baron Sean Sharpe. And having had the benefit of an abundance of personal experience with the inventors and operators of similar establishments between here and proverbial Piss Town, U.S.A., I can tell you this-only a pox-riddled brain could have devised such a hellhole. Only a soulless beast could confine a fellow being to such a filthy pit.”

“From what I’ve seen, you’ve described Baron Willie Elijah to a tee, Doc,” Mildred said. “Not only demented by his own self-indulgent addictions, but savagely cruel to boot.”

“I knew what a psycho he used to be in the old days,” Ryan said, “but I still didn’t think we’d end up here.”

‘”Tis water over the dam, my dear Ryan,” Doc told him, “water over the dam. There’s no going back now.

Our fates are well and truly cast. And though grim they are, it behooves us to try to make the best of them.”

“How long has it been?” Mildred asked J.B.

It was so dark in the cooler that the radium dial of J.B.’s wrist chron gave off an eerie green glow, partially illuminating his face.

“We’ve been down here for close to five hours,” he said. “I make daylight another four hours off.”

“So what happened to the army of stickies?” Mildred asked.

“If they had shown up,” Ryan said, “we’d have known about it. Even down here we should have been able to hear the sec men’s blasterflre. You can bet they aren’t going to hold anything back.”

“But where the blazes are they?” Mildred went on. “Why haven’t they attacked? We all know they couldn’t have been more than three hours behind us on the toll road. They should’ve been here by now, if they’re coming.”

“Dark night, Mildred,” J.B. groaned, “don’t say that.”

“Why not?” she countered. “It’s a possibility we’ve got to face at some point. The stickies might just be headed someplace else. Maybe our guy with the brown-and-white patches has other plans we don’t know about. Hey, for all we know, they all turned around and headed south after we left them. It’s possible we could have screwed up.”

Ryan shifted in his narrow, waterlogged, lower cell.

moving from agonizing pain to somewhat lesser discomfort. His back, neck and legs were cramping from so many hours of a permanently hunched-over position and near-constant shivering. The stench of death and excrement remained as thick as fog in the airless, sealed room, but it now only occasionally made him dry-heave; his senses of smell and taste had been overloaded and largely negated by prolonged, concentrated exposure to the stink.

A product of a diseased brain or not, Ryan had to admit that the cooler was a most efficient torture chamber. It required no personnel and no maintenance; in fact the nastier it got inside, the better it worked. He knew the baron’s cooler could break even a strong prisoner’s spirit, often with a speed that was amazing. He had seen it done himself.

“We assumed Elijah would free us to help him fight stickies,” J.B. said. “If there’s no battle, he could just leave us in here to die.”

“Think about this,” Mildred said. “If the stickies get the upper hand early on, the baron might lose the contest before he can let us out to fight. Nobody would ever look for us in here.”