James Axler – Watersleep

“I’m Ryan Cawdor. This is my boy, Dean,” Ryan said as a greeting, then introduced the rest of the trav­elers in turn.

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Cawdor. All of you. We don’t get many visitors these days,” Bill said.

“You’re one of the wrinklies from outside the park,” Dean said, referring to the condo development located between Greenglades ville and the swamps. In his more coherent days before the dreem rotted his intellect, Larry Zapp had set up the place as a walled safe haven for the old and infirm, as long as they had enough jack to afford his protection.

Never one to pass up the means to make a profit, Larry had taken a former minimum-security prison equipped with separate bungalows and modified it for his own use. After first learning of the setup, Mildred hadn’t been able to resist commenting that Larry had managed to make retiring to Florida take on a whole new meaning.

Getting old in Deathlands had to really be a bitch, Ryan reflected. He’d never really thought about get­ting older—watching Doc deal with the weariness of body and soul on a daily basis was enough to push the image of a seventy-year-old Ryan Cawdor hob­bling around the rad-strewed byways far from his mind. In his younger days of riding at the Trader’s side on War Wag One, Ryan had always assumed that he’d never live long enough to worry about advancing

Now he had a son to care for, and a group of friends who depended on him.

He also had, for all intents and purposes, a wife.

Ryan knew that located in a guarded corner of Krysty’s well-protected mind was the hope they would all be able to return someday to a safe haven and spend the last years of their lives together content and safe. A noble dream, and Ryan shared the senti­ment.

He only hoped he lived long enough to see the day.

“I am indeed a former resident of Zapp’s Rain­bow’s End Retirement Complex,” Bill confirmed.

“Former?” Doc asked.

“Boss Larry’s passing meant an end to our secu­rity, young fella,” Bill said. His choice of term for Doc caused everyone to grin. Doc hadn’t been ad­dressed as young in a long, long time. “Although, truth be known, even with all of Larry’s alarms and motion detectors and armed security men, we were still trapped on the inside like chickens in the hen­house when the fox came calling.”

Ryan knew firsthand how the security of the retire­ment complex was a blessing and a curse. The elderly compound inhabitants had been one of the lures for Adam Traven, who in addition to his pimping and drug selling, also had a sick blood fetish. Soon after his arrival in Greenglades, Traven had started leading his youthful followers over the wall in the retirement area on a regular basis for long bloody nights of “dark snaking,” a term Traven had invented for the murder sprees he’d conducted.

Those who owned the tidy homes inside the com­plex had paid a bundle in order to sleep at night with the impression that nothing could get in to harm them. They were wrong.

Once past the guards into the backyards, it took little effort to break a window, slip a latch, then enter and creep around the interior of the chosen home as the elderly inhabitants slept, blissfully unaware of the horrors that had invaded their lives.

Unaware until Traven woke them up and the gut­ting began.

An unarmed Ryan had been forced to accompany Traven and seven of his followers on one of the kill­ing sprees. By the time Ryan had gained the advan­tage, only two of the killers had escaped his own mur­derous wrath, and it was the last time Traven would ever harm an innocent.

“I remember seeing your group when the late Mrs. Owen accosted the park’s head sec man about want­ing Boss Larry to add more protection,” Bill said. “Guess Larry had his own problems at the time, huh?”

“Yeah, you might say that,” Ryan agreed.

“I came out here to offer you folks some supper and a dry roof,” Bill said, gesturing at the gray, stormy sky. “This joint ain’t what it once was, but I’ve managed to keep my own patch of heaven func­tioning. Come on, you can check out Central Avenue. It’s the main spoke toward the Centerpoint tower and restaurant and the best and quickest way to cut through the park.”