The albino youth was sitting on a low, crumbling wall, looking bored. “Scared shitless, Doc. Ghosts of ancestors. Seen scratchings on walls. Spirits like Flute-player, Kokopela. Locals call themselves Dine. Just means sort of”
“The People,” Mildred said. “Lot of Native American tribes call themselves by their own name for ‘the people.’ I used to know them all once”
“You still got your throwing knives, Jak?” Dean interrupted. “Haven’t seen them.”
“That’s point, kid,” Jak replied.
“Don’t call me” Dean began, stopping and grinning as he realized that he was being teased.
“If you can see knives, so can enemy. That’s why I keep them hid.”
“Still practice though?” J.B. asked. “Now you got the family?”
Jak looked around the site of the Anasazi ruins, pointing with a bloodless finger at one of the desiccated beams that supported a wall, about fifteen yards away. “See poison bug?”
They all looked, seeing the sickly yellow back with leprous silver spots across it, the barbed horns on the insect’s head and the curved stinger, like a miniature scorpion. It was crawling slowly across the rectangular section of wood. From horns to tail it was less than an inch long, though capable of giving a painful wound from its hooked sting.
While they were all looking at the bug, there was a blur of movement from the albino teenager. His wrist snapped, there was a whirring sound like a diving hornet and a thunk as the needle point of the leaf-bladed throwing knife buried itself in the oak beam, clean through the middle of the poisonous insect’s soft body, killing it instantly.
A tiny trickle of colorless liquid seeped from the twitching corpse.
“Holy shit!” Dean breathed.
“Good,” J.B. said. “See you keep your hand in.”
RYAN DID THE SHOOTING. The powerful 7.62 mm round from the Steyr SSG-70 made short work of a couple of young deer, picking them off from the outside of a small herd that Jak had tracked down. The animals had gathered around a shady pond, near the head of a narrow box canyon. Ryan had used the laser image enhancer to select his prey, working the bolt action with fluid ease.
The first animal went down to a brain shot, and the rest of the deer froze for a vital moment. The second round was a direct hit through the spinal cord, clean and finite.
They quickly gutted the dead animals, the blood steaming on the ground.
It was a little after one o’clock in the afternoon.
Jak had brought along poles and cord, making it easy to string up the two limp, lolling carcasses and take turns in bringing them back down the mountainside, toward where the horses were tethered.
They had passed the Indian ruins, with Krysty leading the way, when the fire-haired woman stopped, putting her hand to her mouth, her eyes glazing in the shock of “seeing.”
“No,” she whispered. “Oh, Gaia, no!”
Chapter Seven
Ryan was carrying the end of one of the poles that supported the smaller of the deer carcasses. He stood close behind Krysty when she stopped dead in her tracks, and he instantly lowered the carcass to the dirt and went to her.
“What?” he said, unable to conceal his own shock at the horror etched on her face.
Krysty turned slowly to stare at Ryan, her eyes blank, as though she didn’t even recognize him. “What did you say, lover? Sorry, didn’t hear properly.”
“You’ve seen something?”
“I thought for a moment…. It was like someone projecting a lantern slide on a sheet, right inside my skull. Picture of a bloody skull and raw bones.”
“Who?”
The others had all gathered around, the bodies of the animals already attracting the attention of a number of greeny-blue blowflies.
Ryan repeated his question, laying a gentle hand on Krysty’s shoulder. “Who did you see, lover?”
“I can see you, Ryan. And there’s your little boy, Dean. Good old Doc. Mildred and J.B., together. And” she paused as her emerald eyes hesitated on Jak’s bone-white face “and someone else,” she finished, haltingly.
“I’m Jak,” he said. “You know me, Krysty. Known me ages. Known me years.”
“Oh, this is It’s awful. Death and corruption!” Her voice was raised, close to a scream.
Mildred stepped in and gestured for Ryan to move away. “Sit down, Krysty. Could be the heat’s got to you. Just sit down and take a short rest for a”
Krysty jerked violently away from the woman. “Don’t touch me! I know what I saw. It was Death. Dark rider on his dark horse. Ring of bones around his waist. Eye sockets brimming with maggots. Mouth open and a tongue like burnished copper. Teeth like spilled tombstones.”
Jak looked around uncertainly. “You ever known her wrong in seeing, Ryan?”
“No. But but she sort of feels danger or a threat. Generally can’t say exactly when or where it comes from.”
Krysty arched her back, so that her face was looking directly toward the bright sky. Her burning hair tumbled back off her shoulders, like spilled lava.
” ‘When the Lamb brake the seventh seal, there was a great silence in the heavens for about the space of one half hour. And I saw the seven angels that standeth before the Lord God Almighty and to them were given seven trumpets.’ ”
“It’s the Book of Revelations, from the Bible,” Doc said.
” ‘The first angel made the trumpet to sound and there fell hail and fire, mingled with blood. And they were thrown down upon the earth. And the third part of all the forests were burned and the green grass shriveled and dried.’ ”
“Ryan?” Mildred looked at him. “It’s like she’s become possessed.”
“I know. But I don’t know what the fuck to do about it, Mildred.”
” ‘The second angel sounded and the blazing mountain was cast into the deeps of the ocean and one-third part of all the waters became as blood.’ ”
Jak punched his right fist hard into his left hand. “Come on. We best get back. Leave venison. If all right, can come back for it later.”
Krysty swayed from side to side, barely retaining her balance, as though she alone could hear the far-off sound of weak piping and a little drum.
” ‘The third angel sounded and and there fell a great star from the heavens, blazing as though it were the heart of fire. It fell upon the third part of all rivers and fountains. The name of that star is called Wormwood.’ ”
Her eyes rolled up, white in the sockets, and she stiffened and fell straight back into the waiting arms of Doc, who caught her and laid her very gently on the ground. “By the Three Kennedys, I think that the poor lady has been overtaken by some sort of a fit.”
Jak had started to walk toward the tethered horses, a couple of hundred yards farther down the narrow canyon. But he stopped as Krysty dropped like a board, calling out, “She all right?”
Nobody answered him.
Mildred had knelt immediately by Krysty, putting a finger against her neck to check the pulse, peeling back an eyelid. She looked up at Ryan after a few moments. “She’s all right, I think. More or less a faint.”
Krysty’s eyes opened and she gazed blindly at the circle of faces above her. “Everyone is here,” she said doubtfully. “Then it was wrong what I thought I Where’s Michael?”
“Back at the ranch with Christina and little Jenny,” Ryan replied.
“The ranch,” Krysty said slowly. “We should get back there, fast as we can.”
Jak had rejoined them again. “What you see, Krysty? Trouble at home?”
“Yeah. But it’s fogged. All kinds of people and all sorts of things happening. Just can’t see clear at all. But I think we should get going.”
“Come on!” Jak shouted over his shoulder, running down the slope, his feet kicking up great swimming clouds of vermilion sand behind him. His white hair flowed behind him like a banner of war.
“Yeah,” Ryan agreed. “Mildred, you and Doc help Krysty. J.B. and Dean, with me.”
He’d lived long enough with Krysty Wroth to be sure that her strange, almost-mutie power was rarely wrong. It often lacked a sharp focus, failing to point out precisely where a danger might be. But if she thought there was something wrong at the ranch, then Ryan knew, with a sickly certainty, that she was likely to be correct.
Jak was already in the saddle by the time Dean, fastest over a short distance, joined him. Ryan and J.B. were only a few paces behind.
“Hold on, Jak!” Ryan shouted. “If there’s trouble, then four of us are better than one.”
“Quick, then!” He jerked so hard on the reins that his mount whinnied in shock and reared up onto its hind legs, pawing at the air.
They all spurred together, stirrup to stirrup, moving down the trail at full gallop. Ryan wasn’t the best rider in Deathlands, and his heart was in his mouth as they charged toward the open plain, knowing that if one of the horses put a hoof wrong or rolled over a boulder, then they’d all go clattering down together in a tangle of broken bones.