James Axler – Deathlands

When the child was delivered nine months later, he was a boy, with eyes like rubies and hair as white as the driven snow upon the Mountain of the Star itself. Citlaltepetl.

He grew magically and was a full-grown man of twenty by the end of the first year of his life.

During that mysterious year the crops grew well and the rains came, and every battle was a victory.

But the young man vanished on his first birthday and had never been seen or heard of since.

But the legends told of him, told of what could come to pass one day.

KRYSTY HAD NODDED. “This young man will return and all will be well? Is that it?”

Rain Flower nodded shyly. “Yes. Old ones say this. Now he has come.”

Jak had listened closely to the tale, finally shaking his head in disgust. “Old story’s shit,” he said. “Come from the swamps. Know my mother and father. Not god.”

But the young woman wasn’t to be persuaded of that. During the telling of the myth, her eyes kept turning toward the albino teenager, showing unquestioning worship of him.

“You sure you won’t come farther with us?” Ryan asked. “Mebbe better than staying on your own.”

She shook her head, covering her eyes. “No. You look for spirits of dead. Not me.” She touched the holster with the 10-round Savage. “Be safe from whip men or Jaguar people.”

“Right. We’ll be back in not more than an hour or so. Come on, people.”

THE CONCRETE ROAD into the base was barely visible beneath a carpet of moss. To the right Ryan spotted another of the small tanks, settled on its tracks, covered in a shrub with brilliant orange flowers.

The first building, still in sight of the guardhouse, was in a terrible state, with only one wall standing.

J.B. went closer to examine it, running his hand over the surface of the reinforced concrete. “Bullet holes and grenade fragments and burn marks,” he said. “The natives were right. There was some sort of a battle here.”

His foot disturbed something in the undergrowth and he bent down, picking up a bunch of twigs and clinging vines. It wasn’t until he peeled them away that the others could see that he was holding a blaster, a long rifle.

“I recognize that,” Ryan said, “from our run-ins with Gregori Zimyanin. It’s a Dragunov sniper’s rifle, 7.62 caliber, isn’t it?”

The Armorer nodded. “Right. The old reworked Kalashnikov. Just like we saw the Ruskies using.”

Mildred shook her head. “You mean Russians landed down here? Wherever ‘here’ is.”

Ryan nodded. “We heard stories of them dropping paratroopers in parts of Deathlands in the last hours of skydark. In the far northwest. Alaska and northern Canada. But nobody I know ever found any real proof of that. Least there’s proof that it happened down here in the jungle.”

“This place must’ve had a tactical importance.” Ryan looked around. “Hard to imagine now.”

“Might have been a comp comm center,” Krysty said. “Radar and satellite links to all that hardware circling around up in deep space.”

J.B. nodded. “Makes sense. They might have put them in from Russkie fleet exercises down in the Caribbean. Just drop a handful of specialized troops off a carrier. Surely been a firefight here.”

Doc had sat on the grass, wiping his forehead. “By the Three Kennedys! This is one of the least welcoming environments I have ever encountered. I would appreciate returning to the village and that cool lake as soon as possible.”

“Want to go back and keep Rain Flower company, Doc?” Ryan asked. “We won’t be that long.”

The old man stood, looking weary. “No. I think that I prefer to stay with you. I sympathize with the little mite. This is undeniably a little on the spooky side.”

“There’s a wrecked chopper over there,” Jak said, pointing with a long white finger toward the edge of the forest.

“CH-47,” J.B. said, dropping the rusted relic of the Dragunov back in the grass. “The big Chinook.”

All of them turned toward the entrance of the base as they heard Rain Flower screaming at the top of her lungs.