On the floor of the Best Western Snowy Egret, the huge roan arched his back; openmouthed, he silently screamed his terror. Sweat burst from his forehead; sweat soaked his shirt.
The person behind him was approaching. He could almost feel his hot breath on his naked back. His ears caught the scraping sounds of horns and claws against the branches as his pursuer pushed through, struggling toward...
Toward?..
The jolt was bringing him to a violent mental climax. The vision was nearly there, as he'd hoped. The truth about the strangers might be revealed to him in a moment of vivid revelation.
He was exhausted, panting for breath, his whole body now coated with the blood-sucking leeches. The experience was so appalling that he wanted to fall to his knees and vomit. But then he might get caught by... by what was closing in on him.
It was near.
The sec guards outside the suite heard moaning and panting through the thick door. Then an agonized scream of chilling horror, and Baron Tourment's voice, shrill and gained, barely recognizable. The same phrase, over and over.
The one-eyed man kills me! The one-eyed man kills me! The one-eyed man kills me!
Chapter Fifteen
Ryan's suspicion that others had been in the Holiday Inn within the past few months were reinforced when it became apparent that the slogan painter had been at work. The white letters were dry, but from their condition it was obvious they hadn't been there long.
They were on a wall that ran from the back of the restaurant toward the abandoned swimming pool, with its crust of dried leaves and moss.
The message was simple.
"COME HERE AND YOU DIE."
Ryan picked the best place he could find from which to mount a defense. It had once been a games room with all manner of vids and pinball machines decorated by archaic and oddly beautiful artwork and names like Red-zapper and Wackamole. There was also the yawning maw of a cracked, dust-filled Jacuzzi.
The room had only two doors, one of which had strips of reinforced steel across it, and could be locked and bolted. J.B. studied it, puzzled about the necessity for that kind of security in a games room. He liked the fact that since the room overlooked a deep waterway, there was no way an attacker could sneak through a window. From the swirling disturbances in the gray water, it looked like it was well-stocked with piranhas.
Ryan organized the group into pairs for guard duty, and with help from J.B. and Krysty, arranged a rotation of shifts. They decided that since they could easily lock one of the doors to the games room, only the other one had to be guarded. After some consideration, Ryan said, "We need another guard farther down the corridor that leads to that place where we first came in. What's it called? The..." He glanced surreptitiously at Doc.
The old man responded as Ryan hoped he would. He was evidently recovering from his earlier gloom.
"The lobby, Mr. Cawdor."
"Thanks. We'll split up like this." He stopped. "Doc, I don't want any shit from you. I know you want to be with Lori. But we've got only three trained guns now Ч me, J.B. and Finn here. So, Doc, you go with Finn; Lori with J.B.; and Krysty with me."
"All right," was all the old man said, removing his dented stovepipe hat and dropping Ryan a low courtly bow.
During their first break from guard duty, Ryan and Krysty found themselves a room down the corridor from the games area, one with no heaps of bones in it. Tugging back the covers on the king-size bed, they cosily snuggled into it. Wary of intrusions or disturbances, they removed only a minimum of clothing.
Ryan had deliberately split the bottoms of his dark gray pants so that he could pull them off over his high combat boots. He kept on the brown shirt, still stained with mud and with Henn's blood. The G-12 went on the floor beside the bed, the SIG-Sauer P-226 9 mm pistol beneath one of the two pillows.
Krysty kicked off the magnificent cowboy boots she'd found in the cold redoubt only days back. The chiseled silver points of the toes gleamed in the pale moonlight that filtered through the rotting drapes; the moon also brought the silver spread-wing falcons on the sides to a cold sheen. Krysty rolled down, the khaki coveralls, sliding her thin panties to her knees.
Entwined, they abandoned themselves to their passion. She sighed once as he entered her, her eyes wide open, looking directly into his face. In the moonglow the hooked nose and narrow cheeks made him look almost like some ferocious bird of prey, hovering above her, about to tend her. It was an exciting thought.
They were awakened during, the night by a brief, vicious thunderstorm. Only Doc Tanner slept through it. He lay on his back on the floor of the games room, his mouth hanging open, snoring stentoriously, almost drowning out the howling wind, and the pounding rain.
All of them were awake, up, and dressed by six in the morning.
"What the fuck is there to eat?" asked Finnegan. "Not more of that doomie shit! I look at it in the fucking bowl, and I can't recall if'n I'm just going to eat it, or if I've already eaten it and barfed it back up."
"I farted all night," said Lori, smiling in her simple way.
"Ryan, me and the girls'll go explore some of the houses we passed. Didn't seem too badly damaged or nothing. Got to be tins and bottles. Anything's better than this stuff."
Seeing that both Lori and Krysty were willing, Ryan nodded his approval. "Sure. Take care. Watch out for any gangs and the baron's sec men. He sounds a mean mother." Ryan consulted the chron on his left wrist. "It's nearly six and a half. Leave at seven. Be back by... by eleven. If you run into trouble, fire three spaced shots, and we'll come running."
Just before seven, Ryan found Krysty in the suite where they'd made love the night before. She was pulling the sheets across the rumpled bed.
"Fireblast it, lover! No one's going to complain that we've messed up their room!"
Krysty smiled, shaking her head to tumble the unique hair out of her eyes. "Guess not, Ryan. But Mother Sonja brought her daughter up proper."
Slumping into a well-padded armchair, he watched her gracefully move and his eye was caught by something white beneath the bed. He knelt down, peering at it, giving a sudden, barking laugh. "What is it?"
At his beckoning finger, she joined him on the floor; saw what made him laugh, and laughed also. It was a neat square card, the printing hardly faded in a hundred years.
It read: "Yes. We have even dusted under here."
After Finn and the girls left on their foraging expedition, the others passed the time in their own ways.
Doc browsed among the postcards in the dusty lobby. Picking up one from a pile of leaflets, he took it to Ryan.
"Attractions in West Lowellton and nearby Lafayette," he said. "What a center of activity this must have been before it became a gigantic catafalque."
"What's that?" asked J.B. "Sounds like some old siege weapon."
"A building to house the dead, Mr. Dix. Like this entire continent. Oh, but if I had known then what I know now."
"What's that, Doc?" asked Ryan, sensing a chance to uncover whatever bizarre truth lay behind the man called Doctor Theophilus Tanner.
"Ah, no." Doc wagged his finger. "One day, perhaps, my dear young man. But not now."
"When? You know my past, Doc. How 'bout yours? Come on. It can't be that mysterious."
Doc fumbled with the lion's head atop his ebony sword stick and coughed. "If I were to tell you, Ryan, then I vow you would not believe it."
"I would, Doc. Come on. Now's a good time. Just you, me and J.B. here."