James Axler – Deathlands

“Yeah. If they do, then it’ll be soon. Tonight or tomorrow night is my guess.”

“I’ll go with that,” Ryan said.

“So, what I found up there could be real useful.”

THE DAY SLIPPED BY for Jak.

In their eagerness to make sure the poison took effect, the natives had underestimated the dosage. Jak, who was less than five foot five and weighed only a little over one-ten, didn’t have the body mass of many of the natives, and the drugs carried on working well past noon.

Itzcoatl had arranged for three of the prettiest young maidens from the village to wait outside the hut in case the god became hungry for tender flesh.

But Jak dozed through the whole day, only waking when the sun was already well down on the western horizon.

He was given a feast, but he could only manage some slices of duck and a goblet of water. Unknown to him, all of the dishes on offer had been liberally dusted with the powerful analgesic drug, yauhtli , as a way of keeping him quieted through the ceremony to comeand as a way of relieving him of the worst of the ghastly pain that he was to endure at the height of the great ritual of sacrifice.

Itzcoatl had sat with him, but he left after a few minutes, checking that the fires had been readied on the pyramid and the obsidian swords had been specially honed.

“It must be right,” he said to the assembled priests. “It is not given to us to sacrifice a god every day of the week. There must be no mistakes.”

THE VILLAGERS had gathered around the base of the pyramid, oblivious to the proximity of the group of outlanders in the center of the huge mutie orchid plant.

Ryan made sure that everyone was fully awake and knew exactly what the plan was. He and J.B. had worked on it for most of the afternoon, trying to find any loopholes, trying to see how they might be blocked, looking at everything that might happen, for better or worse.

Trader used to say that an hour of planning was worth a minute of action.

Dean was restless, kneeling with his big Browning ready in his right hand. He still had Jak’s blaster tucked in his belt. Mildred was at his side, keeping up a whispered conversation with the boy, helping to keep his nerves calm, helping to keep her own nerves calm.

Ryan had the Steyr placed in the leaf mold, close to his right hand. A round of 7.62 mm ammo lay under the firing pin.

Krysty was the last of the four. She sat in the lotus position, her hands laid flat on her thighs, her eyes closed, calming herself with the meditation techniques that she’d learned at her mother’s knee.

All four were ready.

“IN THIS LAND it will not be said, I slew a sleeping man.” Jak sang quietly to himself as he walked through the evening stillness of the forest, surrounded by the colorful masked elders of the village. One of his father’s friends, back in the bayous, had possessed a vast repertoire of old predark songs and had taught some of them to the skinny albino teen.

He felt very good, relaxed, calm, ready for whatever was going to happen.

Itzcoatl walked in front of him, holding a beautiful crystal skull aloft, chanting in his own tongue. Then came a pair of priests, one holding a blazing torch and the other an unsheathed sword of black stone. They wore strange cloaks that seemed to have dangling arms and legs. When one of the priests tripped and nearly fell, Jak couldn’t stop from giggling.

Ahead of him he saw a great pyramid of carved stone that seemed to reach toward the orange sky. The whole village stood around its base, and all of them bowed low as he appeared, which made him giggle again.

The steps were steep and Jak had to be helped toward the top of the pyramid.

His legs felt wobbly, his head swimming. The pounding of the drums and the high squealing of the trumpets drove through his skull like white-hot chisels, making him whimper with the pain. But the odd thing was, the pain didn’t seem to hurt him. It was all happening, yet once removed.