James Axler – Deathlands 35 – Skydark

Willie the Sun King.

When Elijah turned back to the room, some of the things he had passed the long night thinking about- things he hadn’t bothered to consider for years-resurfaced in his head. He relived the single most formative incident of his childhood. When the baron was a boy, his old man, who had always appeared to be a perfect norm, had gone cannie after skinning and eating a three-foot-tall mutie bear he’d found stiff-dead in a clearing. Willie’s mother had tried to talk him out of

keeping the foul-smelling meat, but the old man had insisted on making a meal of it.

The following day, while Willie was away from their camp, his father had attacked his mother, sisters and brothers. When Willie returned, he found his entire family gutted, skinned and staked out to dry in the sun. His father was just sitting there with his belly all poo-ched out and a stupid grin on his face. He was so stuffed with hearts, lungs and livers he could hardly move. Which made it a whole lot easier for young Willie to crack his skull open with a sharp bit of rock. The baron-to-be beat his old man’s mutie-contaminated brains into pink mist. Willie figured it was do-or-die time, that as soon as the jerky ran out, his dad would go after him. He dumped all the bodies down a fissure in the earth. All he kept back were a few locks of his mother’s and sisters’ hair, which he still had, tied up in ribbons somewhere.

Shortly after the patricide, Elijah had begun his career as a co Id he art robber along a desolate reach of the six-lane highway that ran past Freedom City, U.S.A. His modus operandi was simple. He crept up on travelers while they were sleeping and clubbed them to death for their worldly goods. His first real break came when he took a blaster and some bullets off one of his victims. After that he moved up in the world rapidly. He headed a gang of other coldhearts that specialized in trading mutie slaves and pushing a cheap and inferior grade of jolt. Eventually he got hired on by Baron George Frederic Sokolow, the previous lord of

Freedom City. Elijah’s job was to supply fresh slaves to work the baron’s plowed fields. With the help of the baron’s wife, he had murdered old Sokolow and taken his place, in both the feudal and matrimonial arenas. He had done away with his princess-wife after she had borne and raised him three healthy and ripe norm daughters.

Elijah’s longevity at the helm was due to a combination of factors. Certainly his ruthlessness played a large part in his success. He also had an ability to manipulate people and keep them at a disadvantage. He stirred up constant intrigues among sec men and toadies, then conducted bloody purges of those he considered the most dangerous. No one had dared to raise a hand to him in more than twenty years.

The baron had spent a good deal of the night thinking about Zit, and wondering what, if anything, the mutie had taken with him when he’d run off some years ago. At the time Elijah had vowed that Zit would be the last mutie he’d ever trust. He’d raised up a lot of others from pups. He could always look in their eyes and read their intentions as plain as day. He’d thought he could read Zit, too, but he couldn’t. Maybe it had something to do with the slave’s screwed-up genes. He’d never seen a mutie go through a change the way Zit had. According to the mercies who’d brought him in, he’d been born with that patchy-colored skin and weepy sore in his forehead. About the time the boy started to show signs of manhood, the sore crusted over, and when the scab dropped off, it had turned into

a full-fledged eyeball, albeit as white as an egg, with loose, I ash I ess eyelids.

Zit had grown up to be a big bastard, but the way he always walked around, with his head hanging down so meek, none of the Willie ville norms were afraid of him. He never gave any of them a harsh look. Muties were another story. Zit put the fear of God into his own kind. Once he had his growth, Elijah worked Zit as an overseer, first in the fields, then in the elevator “motor.” He did such a good job bullying and beating that the baron let him handle the duties of executioner whenever the job came up. Sometimes Elijah would get a mutie slave who wouldn’t be tamed and had to be destroyed. Death sentences were also imposed if.a mutie stole something or looked at a norm funny.