James Axler – Trader Redux

Twenty-eight columns stood around the site. Though he didn’t know how he knew it, Ryan knew that they all had mystic and astrological alignment and significance. The mysterious name Aldebaran came to him.

There was a noise like a huge drum beating, its resonance so deep that it moved the marrow of his bones.

And shouting. Screaming. Women screaming, high and shrill, the sound barely human.

More like horses.

“Horses,” he whispered, turning in his sleep.

“Horses,” Ryan repeated, his eye flicking open.

The moon was close to being full, hanging over the canyon, throwing everything into brilliant silver light and razored black shadows.

He tried to sit up, seeing that the line of horses was totally freaked, rearing and kicking one another, eyes rolling, froth dribbling from their bared teeth.

But Ryan couldn’t even sit up, fighting against the ground that was trembling, waves of movement shaking him. A deafening noise thundered below the earth.

“Quake!” he shouted, his voice feeble, barely audible, even to himself, above the limitless power and wrath of nature.

The air began to fill with dust and spray, and Ryan was chillingly aware that the whole of the huge canyon was folding in around them.

It felt like the end of the world.

Chapter Seventeen

The morning after the run-in with the giant mutie cougar, Doc was in excellent spirits.

He had left the place of death before breaking his fast, leading Judas out of the canyon, onto a narrow trail that Jak had told him about, one that would take him higher, into a region of clear streams and still lakes.

The trail was lined with pinon pines, their heavy scent filling the air as the sun rose to warm them. Twice he passed extensive alpine meadows, covered with an assortment of delicate wildflowers. Among them were carpets of the so-called Deathlands daisy, with its fragile green stem and corona of white petals surrounding the golden heart.

As Doc munched on an apple, washed down with a drink of crystal clear water from a spring nearby, he was able to lie back on the cushioning grass and relax.

Judas was tied securely to a lightning-blasted juniper a few paces away, munching contentedly.

“If there is such a place on this blighted Earth that might still seem to be the Garden of Eden, then this must come close,” Doc said.

He stretched out his thin legs, wincing at the creaking from his knees, looking at the cracked patina of dusty polish on his high boots.

“I swear that my dear wife would not have tolerated such sartorial sloppiness. If it had been possible, Emily would have insisted that the sun wiped its feet before entering our front parlor.”

He lobbed the core of the apple to Judas, who totally ignored it, then closed his eyes and thought back to the all-too-brief time of happiness. He remembered their fifth wedding anniversary, their last wedding anniversary before the white-coats from the future trawled him away forever.

Jolyon had awakened them from his bassinet in the corner of their bedroom, insistent that it was past time for him to receive some sustenance.

His mewling cries woke his sister, Rachel, who had graduated to sleeping in her own little bed in the anteroom beyond the open door. She had climbed out in her nightdress, eyes blinking, rubbing at them with her pudgy fists.

“Ith thomething wrong, Mama?” she asked, in her sweet lisping voice.

Emily had thrown back the coverlet, with its simple Amish design, allowing the child access to their bed.

“This seventeenth day of the month of June, in the year of Our Lord 1896, is most special to us, my chickadee,” she said. “For it was on this day, five years since, that your papa and I pledged our troths to each other.”

Rachel had wanted to know what that meant, and Emily Tanner, cradling baby Jolyon to her breast, had tried to explain to her the significance of the marital vows.

“It means that Papa and I will love each other, and try to do what each other wants. And it doesn’t matter whether we are in good health or whether we shall sometimes become a tiny bit poorly. For as long as we both shall live.”