“All the windows are still there,” Dean said. “Hardly ever seen anyplace predark like that.”
His father eased himself, stiffly, from the saddle, throwing the reins over the stallion’s head and looping them around a rusted metal fence that had probably once marked the edge of the parking lot of the isolated eatery.
“Place is sheltered here,” he said to Dean. “I’d figure that about ninety percent of the damage done to buildings in the old times gotten done by man. Or muties.”
“Make that ninety-nine percent, Ryan,” J.B. said, hissing through his teeth as he straightened his back. “Dark night! I’m not cut out to ride on four legs. Sooner we can catch the General, the better. Mebbe even steal both of his wags to ride back home again.”
The wind was rising as the day crawled to its ending. A six-foot ball of tumbleweed rolled down from higher up the hills, brushing past the wall of the diner, spooking Judas just as Doc was in the process of clambering off its back.
“By the Three Kennedys!” Doc managed to keep his balance, and quickly knotted the reins around the fence. “I have traveled many a country mile with you, Ryan Cawdor, but I have seldom taken less pleasure in the journeying. I am very much a man of peace, as you will all bear witness, yet I shall be more than happy to speed this General and his thuggish gang into the blackness of an afterlife. Anything to avoid having my buttocks separated by this jolting creature. After half an hour it becomes uncommonly like sitting astride a circular saw.”
The Navahos hadn’t dismounted, sitting together in a tight bunch.
Ryan glanced back at them. “What’s the problem, Sleeps In Day?” he called.
“We will not enter.”
“Why?”
The other warriors muttered among themselves. The burly leader nodded to them. “We all say we will not enter.”
“Sure. I hear that. But you have to say why.”
“No.”
“Look. It’s going to be one hell of a storm some time in the next hour or so. We need shelter. We need rest. This time tomorrow there’ll have been a shitload of chilling done. Not all of us might make it home. So, we all have to be at our best. Come on, we’re together in this.”
The Navaho shook his head, stubbornly refusing to say anything to Ryan.
It was Doc who broke the silence. “My dear Cawdor, perhaps I might offer a solution?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
The old man stalked across the damp sand to stand close to the huddled group of Native Americans. He addressed his remarks to Thomas Firemaker.
“You mentioned that you had been here, in this place, some time ago.”
The oldest of the group nodded slowly. Sleeps In Day answered for him. “It is so.”
“When the diner was sealed off by that earth slip? Of course it was then. You must have stumbled upon this by accident, while out hunting. And you had an elderly and sick man with you. Am I correct so far?”
The Navaho leader looked impassively at him. “There is no magic in this,” he said.
“Of course not, my dear man. I have no pretence to be some sort of shaman. I have no wisdom.” Mildred coughed loudly to show her feelings, but Doc ignored her. “But I believe I understand the reasons for your obvious reluctance to enter Mom’s Place. Should I continue?”
Sleeps In Day didn’t reply, but Ryan called across. “Carry on, Doc.”
“The old man died, did he not? He died here, in this isolated relic of a forgotten past. Ended his days in the haunted catacomb of long-gone white men. Thomas Firemaker, is this not the truth of what happened?”
Sleeps In Day started to speak in his own tongue, translating Doc’s words. But the long-haired old warrior replied himself. His English was slow and halting from a long lack of use, like a farm gate in need of oiling.
“You speak right. It was a hard passing, with snow lying thick. In there” he pointed with a long forefinger, “I see things as they were. It is like” He struggled for the word, finally whispering to his leader.
“He says that the diner is like a water hole of time, still and held forever.”
Doc nodded. “An oasis, by God! A time capsule. I’ve seen that sort of thing before in Deathlands. Like a fly trapped for all eternity in a glistening bead of amber, unchanged and unchanging. And now you fear that the spirit of your father’s father lies in wait for you in there. That is it, is it not?”
His voice rose at the last few words, and he triumphantly rapped the ferrule of his sword stick against a small rounded boulder at his feet.
“Been watching too many reruns of Perry Mason , Doc,” Mildred called.
But everyone was concentrating on the face of the oldest of the Navaho, seeing the struggle written clearly there. “It is as you say. The passing from here to the other side was long and painful. In the ending it fell to me to help him cross. There was much pain and he cursed as he died.”
“Cursed you?” Doc asked.
“Cursed my father. Me. This place. Said his spirit would never leave it.”
Krysty had dismounted and walked to stand alongside Doc. “I have the skill of ‘seeing,’ ” she said. “I can feel if there is evil anywhere. It’s something I inherited from my mother, Sonja, when I was a child in the ville of Harmony.”
The Navaho looked at her, no sign of emotion on any of their faces. Sleeps In Day hawked and spit in the dirt. “Words are chains of silver. They bind us. How do we know you speak the truth about this?”
Her emerald eyes flashed like green fire in the gloom of evening. “You don’t. No way I can prove this. But in your hearts I think you can tell the difference between truth and lies. And you know which I deal in.” She waved a hand at the others behind her. “What we all deal in.”
Thomas Firemaker spoke. “You feel bad things here?”
Krysty shook her head, her bright hair seeming like sparks of living fire around her face. “No. I would tell you if I did. To risk danger when there is no need is without any point. I say we should go in and be safe against the night.”
It wasn’t quite that simple.
The Indians argued among themselves for several minutes. Surprisingly Thomas Firemaker appeared to be strongest in favor of using the diner for shelter. It was one of the others, Young Pony Runs, who seemed loudest in opposing the idea. He was in his early twenties, with a massive scar across his forehead, barely healed. It was caused, so Sleeps In Day had told them, by the butt end of a rifle from one of the General’s men. He was yet another in the party with a special reason for chilling the General personally.
“Why can’t we go in, anyway, Dad?” Dean asked. “Let them do what they want.”
“No.” Ryan was adamant. “This isn’t an easy alliance, Dean. I’m not going to try and push them one way or the other.”
At that moment, Sleeps In Day swung his leg over his horse and vaulted athletically to the ground, followed by the rest of the party. Young Pony Runs was the last to move.
Mildred went first, standing by the doorway, ready to push it open. “Welcome to Mom’s Place,” she said.
As she touched the outer door, there was the crashing of breaking glass.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Termites,” she said. “Wood’s rotted and it only took a touch for the whole front pane of glass to fall in.” She grinned. “You can all put away the blasters.”
As she scuffed away the piled shards with her boot, the rest of them relaxed, holstering pistols and uncocking rifles.
“Mebbe the whole place is likely to fall on our heads,” J.B. commented, staring anxiously up at the flat roof. “Walls have some cracks in them.”
“Stood for a hundred years.” Ryan grinned at his old friend. “And I guess it’ll stand for another ten hours or so. Let’s find out.”
The window glass at the front was dulled by the scouring winds of the region, flyblown and covered with thick dust and the ghostly veils of myriad spider-webs.
A sign hung crookedly, with the single word Closed.
“I’ll go first,” Ryan said, the SIG-Sauer P-226 tight in his right hand.
He took a couple of careful steps, feeling the boards creaking under his feet. Then he stopped, paralyzed by the sight that met his eyes.
Ryan had seen a number of flickering, and rarely complete, predark vids over the years, often showed on soiled bed sheets with someone panting away over a pedal-operated power generator. He had always found such films totally fascinating, giving a peephole into the past.