James Axler – Keepers of the Sun

The wizened faces under the layers of grimed dust might have been seventy or eighty years old. Eyes older than time itself stared blankly at the array of wealth and power moving by them. Mouths, toothless, hung open, worms of drool cutting sticky furrows through the burning white powder. Hands with the nail less fingers clenched into claws. Ribs were sunken under the thin, ragged clothes.

“Gaia, save them,” Krysty whispered.

Doc kicked his heels into the flanks of his mount, pulling himself alongside Ryan. “I swear that those are the same pinched faces that I just described in the slums and back alleys of Victorian cities. If progress is the result, then those doomed, wretched children are the price.”

THE HIGHER THEY CLIMBED, the cleaner the air became. Ryan turned in the saddle to look back down the trail, seeing that there was a floating carpet of reddish orange that marked the upper limits of the pollution.

J.B. was at his side, and the two old friends considered the industrialized landscape, unlike anything that either of them had ever seen anywhere in Deathlands.

“It’s dying,” he said.

“People are dying also. Those who live in the ville are better off, a little distance off from the worst of the lung-burning blinding fumes.”

The Armorer took off his glasses and furiously polished them. “If this is the future, then I wouldn’t want any part of it. You realize how much you take for granted back home. The mountains and cold, clear water and the fresh air. Take those away, and you have the dark picture of what’s left of Japan.”

It was an unusually long speech for the little man, showing the depths of his feelings.

Ryan nodded his agreement. “Can’t find a word of argument with you, J.B.,” he said. “Guess there’s always something new to learn about life.”

Mildred was with them. “There’s times that I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know back then.”

Ryan looked puzzled, thinking about what the woman had just said, working it through in his mind. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I get it. You mean that things you were ignorant about when you were younger, that it was better that way.”

“You got it, Ryan,” she said, smiling, gazing past him. “I see that Hideyoshi’s looking worried about us getting left behind. Better move it.”

“THIS IS ONLY TRACK across mountain to sea,” Hideyoshi said as they stopped on a plateau, facing a steeper section of the hill that would take them up and over the ridge. The trail was only about ten feet across at its widest, barely enough for the carts to pass through.

“Looks more narrow ahead,” Jak commented, shading his eyes against the setting sun.

“Wags stay here,” the samurai said. “Camp here for night. Go on at dawn.”

“Why not build a proper road, if there’s much traffic between the sea and here?” Ryan asked.

“Quakes just knock it down again. Lucky there hasn’t been one since we started. This famous part for bad ones. They happen almost every day.”

Mashashige had dismounted and was walking past them, leading his own stallion, pausing as he heard what his number three was saying.

“This is a true thing,” he said. “All the bravery and cunning that we show is undone by the gods that sleep beneath the mountains and far out under the waters. Near the top of the trail, it becomes very dangerous and many have died. There is a sheer Right word? Sheer?”

“Yes,” Ryan said. “That’s the right word.”

“Is good. Sheer drop to sharp rocks and fast river. One wrong step” His long, narrow hands described a diving motion in the air in front of him.

BLANKETS AND SLEEPING rolls were handed out from the wags, and a number of large cooking fires were lit all around the rocky, open space.

Iron pots of rice were heated, steaming in the cold night air, along with flavorsome soups that contained shredded eggs.

“Fish,” Doc said, wrinkling his nose. “More poisonous metals and chemicals wrapped in scales.” He raised his voice to call out to Yashimoto, who was walking by with a couple of the other senior samurai. “Any meat cooking there?”