James Axler - Deathlands 33 Eclipse at Noon

/* /*]] */ Axler, James - Deathlands 33 - Eclipse at Noon The storm had Krysty in its thrall, whirling her up and over

Ryan was after her, feet skidding on the wet planks, blinded by the spray. One hand reached for the slippery rail, while the other grabbed helplessly at the torn canvas shroud that held his lover.His fingers brushed it, and he saw it snag for a moment on the stanchion on the end of the stern. The one-eyed man snatched the moment to lock his hand in the rough, soaked material, steadying it for a couple of seconds on the brink of the drop, feeling Krysty's weight tugging against him.Agonizingly it was shifting him as well, lifting him, pulling him up and over the rail, following her toward the thrashing, whirling paddle.He was over, managing to twist like an acrobat and grab the iron stanchion, hanging on to the suspended canvas with his other hand. Ryan clung there, poised between life and death, aware that nothing could save them. In a few seconds his grip would go, and they would be doomed.He had closed his eye, then opened it once moreto find that he was staring, inches away, into the blankly incurious steel eyes of the Magus. A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM WORLDWIDETORONTO NEW YORK LONDON AMSTERDAM PARIS SYDNEY HAMBURGSTOCKHOLM ATHENS TOKYO MILAN MADRID WARSAW BUDAPEST AUCKLANDIf you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."This, like so many others, is for Liz.But this one is with all my thanks for the happiest and finest life together that anyone could ever have.Whatever happens, a part of me will always be with you.First edition September 1996ISBN 0-373-62533-2ECLIPSE AT NOONCopyright 1996 by Worldwide Library.All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.Printed in U.S.A.One should head eventually for the place where the land becomes mainly sea and the sea becomes mainly sky.From Midnight Rambler,the Collected Thoughts of Chairman Mark ,published by Islander Press of Key West, The paths across the side of the tree-lined valley seemed endless to the terrified woman. If only she'd thought to bring a blaster, she could have gunned down the madman who pursued her with such relentless ferocity. But she'd trusted Straub.As she ran and dodged, water showering off overhanging branches, Countess Katya Beausoleil swore a dreadful oath to herself to slaughter Straub, slowly and in the utmost agony, for what he had done to her.Ryan Cawdor was about thirty yards behind, clumsy with his wounded leg, unable to run flat out. His arms were stretched in front of him, fingers aching to grasp the slender white neck and tear and mangle and throttle it, to force the life from the protruding eyes and smile at the purpled tongue.At least there would be that.But the woman kept ahead, arms pumping, racing toward the end of the path. The observation platform over the gorge was at the dead end of the path a hundred yards away.SHE WAS BACKED against the raw face of the cliff, trembling, mewing like a kitten, fingers knotted into the flimsy wire fence, her weight against it, making it sway back and forth. Ryan faced her, blocking the exit back toward the ville, his spine touching the rusting supports. Behind him was the drop of hundreds of feet, the last hundred or so sheer down to the thread of foaming water racing below."You didn't have to butcher them all," he yelled, voice torn from his throat in a scream. "It was just you and me."The countess made a move toward him, her mouth working. "Listen to me," she began. "Straub played"Ryan swung a roundhouse, feeling the satisfying force of the impact as the woman's cheekbone splintered, the force of the punch knocking her down against the rocks, the back of her head cut and bleeding, her hair soaked and matted. Her bright eyes half closed for a moment."Get up, bitch," he whispered, inaudible above the thunderous roaring. "I'm going to beat you to a bloody pulp and then drop you over the fucking edge. One way all the way down. Pay a fraction the price. Then Straub."Her eyes blinked open, and he stooped and swung her up, gripping the torn material of her dress, holding her balanced while he measured the next punch.Krysty Wroth was in sight, stopping and cupping her hands. "Ryan! Hey, Ryan!" she shouted in a voice that would have shattered crystal at a hundred paces.Ryan started to turn, disbelief stark on his face, his mouth sagging open. He blinked through the driving rain, seeing a blurred vision of a tall woman with a shock of bright, fiery hair. Another figure, hair like snow, was at her side, as were three others, farther back, staring at him."Krysty" he whispered, a rush of knowledge paralyzing him for a moment.Katya Beausoleil pushed against him with all her failing strength, catching him off balance, propelling him hard into the frail fencing. He heard rusting iron creak and snap.And he was staggering backward, feet brushing air, falling away.Krysty screamed once.Ryan was over the edge, pushing the limp body from him, rolling onto a steep slope of treacherous mud. His fingers scrabbled to find purchase, but failed to find a grip. He spread himself, his arms and legs wide, somersaulting over and over, the gray sky and the dark, shining dirt whirling around him.He glimpsed the white dress below him, vanishing over the last sheer brink and tumbling into the water, disappearing from his sight.He quickly reached the final frontier himself, skidding over it, hopelessly out of control.Flying.Flying, falling, spinning.He hit the surface of the flooded river with a crushing, fearsome impact, trying to keep his body straight, blacking out. The shock of the icy, raging torrent brought him around for a snatched moment.The force of the current was unimaginable, filled with sucking maelstroms and murderous smooth boulders. Ryan was sucked under and spit out into the air, then drawn deep under once more, into the welcoming darkness. His eye closed. Krysty Wroth stood and stared blankly into the singing space, spray pasting her fiery hair across her forehead, her bright emerald eyes dulled and lifeless. Her fingers gripped the rusting remains of the security fence that ringed the crumbling viewing platform above the abyss.Her lips moved, and she whispered Ryan's name as she peered into the gorge. The two tiny figures were spinning, vanishing and rising again in the turbulent water of the racing river, moving at incredible speed between the sheer walls of wet rock."Mebbe he can stay up," said John Barrymore Dix, the Armorer, as he stood by her elbow, pushing back his fedora.Jak Lauren shook his head, his red eyes glowing in the gloomy half light like burning rubies. His torrent of snowy hair dripped in dreadlocks across his scrawny shoulders, his face, pale beyond belief, staring out over the steep ravine."No," he whispered, responding to J. B. Dix's comment. "No way could make it there. Not after fall."Mildred Wyeth, the stocky black woman doctor of the group, had one arm resting lightly around Krysty's waist, comforting her. Her right hand was on the butt of her Czech target revolver, but there was nobody left to shoot.The last member of the group, panting heavily, arrived late as ever. Doc Tanner had witnessed the last scene of the dreadful drama from farther away, blinking through his watery blue eyes at the fight and the fall. Now he stood stricken, his hands clasped in mute prayer in front of him, the ebony swordstick glistening with water, its ferrule resting on the soaking concrete."I wonder whether we should not be trying to convey ourselves down the stream, following it along, until we can do something to recover the body of our dear, dear friend."Krysty turned slowly to face the old man, seeing the tears that clung to his lined cheeks, and felt the first numbing awareness that Ryan was possibly dead.Probably dead."He's gone, Doc," she said quietly. "Never be able to find the body."Jak coughed. "Look far along. Seems cliffs get lower. Not right leave Ryan to vultures and coyotes. Rest of you stay if want. Going to try find him." He looked at the other four companions. "He'd have done it for me."THEY LEFT the huge mansion behind them and set off along the windswept, barren rocks, moving westward, following the line of the river.A watery sun peeked through ragged strips of dark purple clouds, barely bright enough to cast a weak shadow behind the friends. They picked their way, slowly climbing lower toward the river, though its foaming surface still seemed to be several hundred feet below them.Ryan's body had long vanished.The woman's corpse had been caught within their sight for a few minutes in a vicious backwash under a jagged fall of twenty or thirty feet, where the water stripped away the tattered remnants of the clothes, leaving the corpse pink and dappled with blood, then as white as a wind-washed bone.Finally, perversely, the river let the body go, washing it farther away at dashing speed until it, too, vanished as the gorge curved toward the north.Evening was closing in.J.B. eased the Smith amp; Wesson M-4000 scattergun on his shoulder. "Take five, people." With Ryan gone he had automatically assumed control of the friends.Jak was carrying Ryan's rifle on his back, the Steyr SSG-70 bolt-action, 10-round, 7.62 mm hunting weapon. Though their exit from the ville had been close to the edge of panic, everyone had their clothes and weapons.Krysty sat and leaned against a stunted pinon a few paces from the edge of the drop. Her face was drawn and tense, her hair matted close to her nape in a tight ball. She closed her eyes and spoke a brief prayer to Gaia, the Earth Mother, that a miracle might have happened and that Ryan might be spared from the pounding, grinding doom.But her heart told her the inalienable truththat nobody could have survived that drop.Not even Ryan.THEY FOUND WHAT REMAINED of the corpse of Countess Katya Beausoleil just as the sun was finally sinking in a copper glow behind a range of low hills toward the west. The river was widening and becoming a little more gentle, flowing between wooded banks of thick gray mud.The head was missing from the body, sunk in some deep pool, ripped away in ragged tendrils of sinew and gristle, the flesh a dirty white color. One arm was gone, torn off at the shoulder, and the other had disappeared. The legs had both been broken a dozen times, splintered stumps of bone showing through the wrinkled, pallid skin.There was no way of recognizing the elegant, powerful woman who had been their hostess and had brought murder and disaster to them. What remained of the corpse lay sprawled in the mud at the edge of the river, water lapping at it, making it rock gently back and forth."Should get it?" Jak asked hesitantly.As they looked across, a pair of mutie fish-falcons swooped in from the north, out of the pines. They had wingspans approaching twenty feet and huge bronze hooked beaks. Golden eyes looked incuriously at the five invaders of their territory as they sliced through the dusk, settling on the raggedy flesh of the dead woman."Let it lie, Jak," Mildred said. "Bitch got something like she deserved."Doc nodded his agreement. "I have encountered divine vengeance many times in Deathlands. To be ripped apart and then be food for the fowls of the air in a river of vile, stinking mud is an apposite ending for that ghastly, murderous person.""No sign of Ryan. Not even a rag of his clothes," J.B. commented. "Nothing."Krysty sighed and stretched, standing to stare around in the dying light. "Nothing more we can do tonight," she said. "We might miss something.""Camp a little way inland from the river," the Armorer suggested. "No sign of any pursuit from the ville. Must be a good ten miles away by now."For a few moments they watched the rapacious scavengers as they ate, peeling away a long strip of intestines, squabbling noisily as they tugged it between them.Krysty shook her head. "Just hope that what's left of Ryan isn't" She let the sentence fade into the darkness."We'll make an early start in the morning," Krysty announced, heading away from the quiet river.Behind her, Jak and J.B. exchanged a meaningful, hopeless glance, but neither of them spoke. Next page