Skydark Spawn

“I’ll have a pear,” J.B. said. “How about you, Krysty, Ryan, Jak?”

“Apple,” Jak said.

“Pear for me,” Ryan said.

Krysty smiled. “Me too.”

“These look good,” J.B. said, handing a reddish-green pear to Ryan, and then to Krysty. “Mebbe I’ll have one, too.”

J.B. fished a pear out of the bag for himself.

“These are truly wonderful peaches,” Doc said, admiring the fruit in his hand. “Did I ever tell the story about the man I met who rode with Kit Carson when the red-eyed son of a bitch burned out the peach orchard in Canyon de Chelly?”

“Yes,” Ryan answered.

“Heard it,” Jak said.

“Many times,” Mildred chided.

“Well, it is quite the story….” Doc said, his words trailing off until he bit into his peach again.

And for the next five minutes, the companions walked the roadway in relative silence except for the sounds of crunching fruit and the scrape of their boots on the asphalt.

THE SUN WAS JUST beginning to fall behind the western horizon as they entered the outskirts of Falls ville.

Most of the buildings they’d passed until now were in ruins. One of the buildings had been called Ripley’s, with the outside covered with pictures of two-headed goats, men joined at the hip and other common Deathlands mutations. The friends were somewhat confused by the renderings, wondering if the structure was predark or skydark.

“Ripley was a man who collected predark oddities and put them in museums for people to gawk at,” Mildred explained.

“People pay jack see this?” Jak asked.

Mildred smiled. “As one of Mr. Ripley’s colleagues once said, there’s a triple-stupe bastard born every minute.”

There were other similar establishments, all of them advertising wonders that were all too common in the Deathlands, many of them having to do with wax.

When the road ended at the water’s edge, they turned left and followed the weed-infested trail that ran parallel to the river as it flowed toward the falls. As they came to the falls themselves, the air became filled with a moist chill as the water crested over the falls and crashed onto the rocky gorge below. It was an impressive sight, but the amount of water running over the falls was nothing like what Mildred had said flowed there in predark times.

On their left was the strangely shaped tower that stood some two hundred feet above them and likely gave an excellent view of the falls and the surrounding area. Ryan made a note to check out the tower in the morning light. If the sky was clear, he’d be able to do an easy recce of the area for miles around. Directly in front of them were two buildings that looked to be fairly stable. The first was a large structure fronted by a steel framework that had obviously been covered in glass during predark times, but was now nothing more than a white steel skeleton. On one of the metal ribs a faded green sign read Casino Niagara, which was a special kind of place, Mildred explained, where people gambled away all their jack.

“Why would they do that?” Dean asked.

“For fun,” Mildred answered.

Next to the bones of the white skeleton was a much older building. It was also white, but only because that was the color of its stonework. Although most of the building’s windows had been blasted out, a few panes were still intact. Some of the pale red letters on the roof had toppled over, leaving the rest of the letters to read her ton-Fall View. It was obviously a hotel, and just as the sec men at the farm had said, there looked to be plenty of places to spend the night.

“That one looks like a fine establishment,” Doc said. “Why do we not sleep there tonight?”

“I could use some rest,” Krysty said, her hair falling straight down from her head and hanging limply over her shoulders. “Those last few miles really tired me out.”

“I’m beat, too,” J.B. added. “I’d like to sit down for a while, mebbe have some more fruit and call it a night.”

Ryan didn’t like the idea of sleeping in a strange building without a recce, but the ville seemed deserted enough and it wouldn’t be too hard to find a room on the first or second floor that they could make secure for the night. Besides, he was feeling exhausted himself, and a night in a hotel room, even the rad-blasted remnants of one, sounded good.

“All right,” he said. “That’s where we’ll go. Jak and Mildred, scout the grounds around it and meet us in the lobby.”

Jak handed his bag of fruit to Dean, and then the albino and the physician quickened their pace with blasters drawn and ready.

“Are you looking forward to a night in bed, lover?” Krysty asked.

“You have to ask?” Ryan answered.

GRUNWOLD CLIMBED the last few steps to the top of the Skylon Tower slowly. The sec chief had double-timed it to the lookout station from Fox Farm, and his lungs were complaining against the strain. He took a few moments to rest at the entrance to the observation deck, not wanting to show his men any weakness, then entered when his breathing and heart rate had come back down to something closer to normal.

“Where are they?” he asked the sec man on watch.

“They’re heading toward the Fall view,” the sec man answered, not taking his eyes from the binoculars that were trained on the heart of the ville. “My guess is that they’re going to stay there tonight.”

“Good,” Grundwold said. “Where’s the team on the ground?”

“They’re a few hundred yards behind.”

“Have they been spotted?”

“No. I even lost sight of them myself a few times.”

“Have the outlanders been eating any fruit?” Grundwold asked.

“Yes,” said the sec man. “They were all eating as they entered the ville. Looked pretty hungry, too.”

“Excellent!” Grundwold said with a smile. “That should make them ripe for the picking.”

Chapter Seven

“Jak’s still scouting the inside. The area outside the hotel is clear,” Mildred reported. “And there’s no sign that anyone’s been through the area in a while.”

Ryan nodded. He was glad for the news, but wasn’t sure how a ville with so many buildings didn’t have more people living in it. Where had all the people gone? It was another question whose answer would probably be forthcoming in time. But despite any misgivings Ryan had about staying in the old hotel, it was getting dark out and the friends needed to find a place to bed down for the night. “All right, let’s take a look inside and find a place to sleep.”

The friends stepped through the broken glass that had once been the hotel’s front door and entered the lobby with blasters in hand. While there didn’t seem to be anyone living in the ville, a few of the hungry muties could still be crawling around looking for a meal. But even that seemed unlikely, since there was even less food in the ville than there was in all the surrounding rad-chilled farmland.

As they moved through the lobby, Doc walked behind the front desk to have a look around. “Well, I’m honored to be one of the first guests here since 2001,” he said, wetting the tip of a pencil on his tongue and signing the guest book on behalf of the friends.

The hotel was laid out in a pair of long corridors that stretched out in opposite directions from the lobby. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but they could probably establish a defensible position somewhere in the hotel, allowing them all the good night’s sleep they so desperately needed.

Just then a door opened at the end of the ground-floor hallway. The friends immediately had their blasters raised and ready to fire, but it turned out to be Jak returning from his recce of the hotel’s upper floors.

“Long halls, many rooms,” the albino teenager reported. “Second floor best. One way up, many ways out.”

Ryan nodded. Since the elevators wouldn’t be working, the only way up would be by the stairs. But a building like this had to have at least two stairways, maybe even more in case of fire. “Only one stairway?” Ryan asked.