James Axler - Deathlands 30 Crossways

/* /*]] */ Axler, James - Deathlands 30 - Crossways "Going over, Dad! Dean yelled

Ryan realized that the boy was right. The mules were off and running, but the reins had snagged, dragging them inexorably toward the drop on the right.They were within fifteen feet of the last mounted bandit who was swearing at his mare, urging her out of the way of the charging mules. Ryan balanced himself against the rocking of the rig, firing once, seeing the man go down with blood blossoming on his chest his arms flung wide.Dad! Foot's caught!"Then the rig began to tilt seeming to hang sickeningly on the edge of the sighing space for an eternity before the terrified team pulled it right off the trail. 30 in the Deathlands series A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM WORLDWIDETORONTO NEW YORK LONDON AMSTERDAM PARIS SYDNEY HAMBURG STOCKHOLM 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."* * * As we move together into fresh woods and pastures new, this one is for Liz. It comes with all my love and it will always come with all my love.* * * First edition February 1996ISBN 0-373-62530-8Copyright 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.* * * Teachers are to life what morticians are to death. They rip out your guts, drain you of your vital fluids and then turn you into what they think you should look like to face eternity. Or they just do what they can to make life feel like eternity.The Best Education Is No Education , by Jean-Paul Godard, Vanquer Press, Paris* * * Ryan Cawdor lay in the gateway chamber of the matter-transfer unit at the heart of Redoubt 47, in the wilds of what had a hundred years earlier been the state of Louisiana."Who could?" he said slowly, his voice distorted, throbbing inside his skull.Krysty Wroth's fingers squeezed his hand very hard, painfully. She was telling him something, shouting. But the jump was almost under way.Almost.A silhouetted figure stood outside the heavy door, someone tall and skinny, wearing black.Ryan's grip on the present had almost gone, and he clung to consciousness by a ragged fingernail. Images floated through his whirling mind.The massive dark brown armaglass door to the chamber was opening, closing.Dark figure.White hair.Face close against his, with eyes that leaked bright blood. A skin like paper.Old, immeasurably old.Hissing words. " what you did...."As blackness finally swallowed him up and his eye closed, Ryan's last sentient thought was that his nostrils were filled with the acrid stench of decay.Of death. As usual, making the jump had plunged Ryan into the singeing deeps of nightmare.He was in a frontier pesthole, standing in the scorching heat of the noon sun. It took only a moment for him to be aware that the scent of fresh-cut lumber that flooded his nostrils came from the wooden frame that surrounded him, a frame that was clearly a gallows.Ryan's hands were tied tightly behind him with rawhide. The knots pulled so hard that he could feel blood dripping from purpled nails.He wore his usual clothes, except for the long coat and the white silk scarf with the silver dollars sewn into each end. The holster on his right hip was empty of the SIG-Sauer, and the sheath on his left hip lacked the weight and balance of his eighteen-inch panga.There was a crowd building around him. The sound of music attracted him, and he glanced to his right. A stubby white man and a tall, elegant black man leaned against the side wall of the Golden Eagle saloon. Both held long-necked banjos and were singing a song. The words weren't quite clear enough for Ryan to hear.Something about a gun quicker than lightning?The balcony of the Two Up gaudy was already lined with whores, dressed only in cotton drawers and chemises, with high-buttoned boots. All held parasols to shield them from the ferocity of the sun. One of them, a skinny blonde with sleepy eyes, saw Ryan looking in their direction and touched herself between her thighs, sucked her finger and blew him a kiss.Ryan looked away.There were three men on the gallows with him.One was a stout sheriff with a polished badge who seemed to have eaten beans for his breakfast and kept making the air noisome with his farting.Next to him stood a priest, sweating heavily in a black suit of good broadcloth. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, with a pale face and spectacles with gold rims that kept slipping down his beaky nose. He was holding a prayer book in both hands, but he had to keep wiping his fingers on the side of his pants to dry them. Ryan was irritated by the priest's nervous habit of noisily clearing his throat every few seconds.The third figure was, Ryan guessed, the hangman.He was immensely tall and skeletally thin, dressed from head to toe in black. On the index finger of his right hand the man wore a silver ring, shaped like a death's head, with a fire opal set in its brow. He wore a hood that covered his head, with slits for the eyes.Ryan had glanced twice at the bizarre figure, blinking as he seemed to glimpse the red glow of fiery embers behind the eye slits.The rough hemp noose tight around Ryan's throat was prickling at his skin, and he turned his head to one side to try to shift the discomfort of the large knot that the hangman had adjusted just below his left ear.An urchin in the front of the swelling crowd stopped and picked up a rough pebble, hefting it at Ryan, who swayed to one side so that it missed his head. The child's mother, a rosy-cheeked matron in a gingham dress and poke bonnet, slapped at the boy, shrugging apologetically at Ryan."How long, Sheriff Nolan?" the priest asked, having cleared his throat.The fat lawman reached into his vest pocket and plucked out a silver pocket watch, clicking it open and peering at the face. "Be noon in about five minutes.""Time passes so slowly when one is being amused." The voice from under the enveloping hood was a sepulchral whisper, no louder than the rustling of paper."That is true, sir," the priest agreed, nodding like a rocking doll."Anything you want to say, Cawdor?" the sheriff asked. "You got a couple of minutes.""I don't know why I'm here," Ryan replied."How's that, son?""I know it sounds stupe, but I'd be grateful if you could tell me why you're planning on hanging me."Nolan threw back his head and laughed, the priest joining in with a nervous titter. "Well, now, that's a good one, ain't it, Reverend?""Indeed it is, Sheriff, indeed it is."The noose seemed to be getting tighter around Ryan's throat, and he swallowed hard."You're here, Cawdor, to pay the blood price for the crime you committed.""What crime?""As if you didn't know.""I don't know. Fireblast, Sheriff! Stop this bastard game playing!""Now, son, you know very well that you must have committed a crime, otherwise we wouldn't be here to give you a neck-stretching party.""To teach you to tango on air," the hangman whispered."To show the good folks of the town how we settle the hash of bloody bastards like you," the priest added quietly, clearing his throat."But why?" The rope was pinching harder, and Ryan found it hard to speak.The hangman moved forward a couple of steps, to stand close to Ryan, emitting the odor of fresh-turned earth in an ancient grave. "This gallows has only been built for you, Ryan. Once you've hung a few hours we can take it down forever.""What about my body?" As if that really mattered a damn, he thought.Nolan answered him. "Cut down and dragged around town behind the lady mayor's stallion. Then stripped naked and slung on the manure pile behind the Clanton Livery Stables, so folks can see you're truly dead and gone.""And then we can all sleep easy," the priest said sanctimoniously, holding his hands steepled together. "Is it noon, Sheriff?"As if in answer, the town square was flooded with the deep sound of a church bell, tolling the fourth quarter of the hour, followed by twelve chimes.Nolan farted noisily. "Best get it over."He walked to the front of the platform and clapped his hands for quiet. Gradually the chattering died down. "You all know why we're here," he shouted. "So now, we'll do it."The priest coughed nervously and stood at Ryan's side, resting one moist hand on his shoulder. The other held the small black prayer book, the pages fluttering like aspen leaves in a hurricane."Insomuch as it has blessed Almighty God to take this wretch into his keeping, we are gathered here today in his sight and in the face of this congregation to witness the prescribed ending for this evil doer.""But what have I done?" Ryan said loudly.His words were relayed through the crowd, now numbering several hundred, and were greeted with bellows of merriment."Tell us how blessed are the cheese makers!" shouted a fat old man in the middle of the mob, drawing more laughter from those around him.The priest giggled and waited for the noise to abate. "The sentence of the court was that Ryan Cawdor should be brought to this place of lawful execution and here hung by the neck until he was dead, his body finally to be buried in an unmarked grave in the grounds of the prison where he was last confined." A studied pause followed. "And may God have mercy on his soul.""No chance of that," the executioner breathed. "Not after slaying my brothers and my sister.""Do your duty," the sheriff intoned."But you haven't told me my crime," Ryan protested hoarsely. The noose was shrinking, tighter and tighter, so that he could hardly breathe."Life is easy, but waiting is hard," the hangman whispered as he reached up to adjust the knot.For a moment Ryan had an odd vision. He knelt naked in a shell hole between two masked men who passed a slim-bladed flensing knife back and forth in front of him, as though they waited for him to seize the bone handle and thrust it deep into his own chest."No," Ryan said. "I won't do it.""I will," the hooded man stated, reaching to one side and throwing a long wooden lever.Even as the trap jerked open and he started to fall, Ryan heard himself say, "I want to be a living man."There was a dreadful jarring sensation, as if his skull had been severed, the spinal cord snapping in two. Ryan heard a great roar from the crowd, but it quickly faded into silence, a silence so intense that he could hear the cold wind that blew between the worlds.He knew that he still lived, that the gallows drop hadn't been long enough to break his neck and give him a relatively merciful passing.His body revolved very slowly, but he couldn't breathe, his throat constricted, choking and strangling.Ryan opened his eye.Sheriff Nolan, the priest and the hooded executioner had all gone. The town, the saloon, the gaudy sluts and the watching throngall gone.The gallows had become transmogrified into a crooked hanging tree, a lightning-blasted sycamore with a jagged branch sticking out, almost at a right angle. Ryan glanced down, seeing that the toes of his dusty combat boots were only a couple of inches from the stunted grass.But it might as well have been a couple of miles.Slowly and agonizingly, he was dying, his body twisting in the summery breeze. He could smell juniper and sagebrush, and the scent of an opened grave.The tall black-clad figure of the hangman stood just in front of him, hands clasped together, head to one side, as he considered Ryan's slow passing."Help," the one-eyed man whispered, the word barely breathed, almost inaudible, even to himself."Did you ask for help, Ryan?" he heard the feathery voice of the executioner ask."Please""It pleases me not to please you but to please myself. And the memories of my family."Either the sun was setting, or death was closing down all of the lines.Darkness was spreading across the high plains country where Ryan dangled from the hemp noose. Shadows were lengthening across the sun-baked turf. He could see his own elongated shape, still slowly twisting."Show you mercy," the gloating hangman said. "I'll speed your passing. Feel the life flee your corpse. Hang on to you, Ryan, my arms around your neck in a lover's embrace." The voice was as dry and dusty as an ancient papyrus.Now he was doing what he'd said, the pressure on Ryan's neck almost intolerable, as though a steel hand of fire was reaching up the inside of his spine and into his brain, squeezing out his immortal soul.The hood was discarded, leaving a mane of snowy hair tumbling about the hangman's face, writhing against his skin like coffin worms. Mad ruby eyes glared at him.RYAN OPENED his eye.And screamed. Next page