"Twenty-fifth January. Air filter doesn't fucking work properly 'gainst what the Reds dosed us with. I can feel it rotting my fucking bones. Peggy's worse. I'm going up top to see one time. If anyone ever sees this, you'll know what it's like."
The camera showed the walls of the tunnel and angled shots of the ladder as Haggard carried it up. He panted and sighed, stopping a couple of times to gather breath. Then there was a break, presumably while he cautiously opened the hatch and peered out. The next shot was in his garden, the man providing his own commentary on what they were seeing.
"Lotsa smoke all round. Looks like there's houses fired toward 'fayette. Our house is standing good."
Wobbling and jerking as Haggard carried the camera with him, shooting as he went, the film showed a murky scene, poorly lit on account of the smoke drifting by. At first it didn't seem the holocaust that Ryan and J.B. knew it to have been.
Then it began.
The commentary began to stammer and fade, sinking to a spasmodic muttering that identified people here and there. It finally faded to silence, and the sound track only picked up a low keening, with a piercing scream intermittently shattering the quiet.
The land was a massive enamel house. A land that was filled only with the dead and the dying. A high wind whipped clouds across the sky, which seemed to be a dark purple, like braised flesh. Wherever the lens probed, there was death. Young and old, frail and hale, all felled by the same single swipe of the nuclear scythe. The nuking had been cunning and selective, hitting only creatures that breathed, sparing all the buildings.
"Tom Adey and his young kid... Beulah and her gran... little Melanie and her folks... Pop Maczyzk... new married couple moved into the Wainwright place last week."
Dead and dying.
On porches and in the road. One body hung out of a burned car, the head, arms and upper torso untouched by the flames; the lower torso and the legs were charred and blackened; the mouth was open in a soundless scream of ultimate agony.
Dogs crawled along the sidewalk, snapping at their own hind paws, eyes rolling, tongues hanging from their jaws. A wheelchair was caught by the vid camera, tipped on one side, wheels slowly rotating in the wind, its occupant vanished.
The camera swung wildly through 180 degrees, pointing at the ground, its shots very jerky and fast.
"He's heading back here," said Ryan. "Had enough. Poor fucker can't take any more of what happened to his neighborhood."
The picture went blank, and J.B. moved toward the television, thinking it was over. But it wasn't.
Not quite.
A face swam into approximate focus. The face of a mortally ill, dying man, still recognizable as Don Haggard, but drawn and yellow and thin. Dark seams furrowed his face from his hose to the corners of his mouth, and the eyes were veiled with a dreadful fatigue. He wore a plaid shirt that was moist with vomit and what looked like drying blood.
The voice was hoarse and labored. The tape ran on with long pauses as the man seemed to fight to remember how to speak.
"Donald Haggard here of West Lowellton. Don't know the date no more. Been six days since Peg passed away. Poor old dear been sleeping more and finally slipped from me while I slept. I got the sickness like everyone. Been shitting so much I can't keep me clean no more. Lost all my dignity. Puked blood today. Can't be soon 'fore I join my darling. Guess our boys are long dead. Hope they died quicker and easier than folks round here. Conceived in fucking liberty... We can't hallow or consecrate this ground..." He was overtaken by a coughing fit, his body shaking. "Last full measure of devotion... It shall not perish from the earth. No, no, no."
"Turn it off, J.B.," said Ryan.
Don Haggard's voice was weakening. "Heard knocking a whiles back, but I couldn't... wouldn't have... not going out again." The man staggered to his feet, swaying to and fro, pointing a finger at the camera. "Do you feel fucking lucky, punk?" he said, to the bewilderment of two people a century later.
That was the last he said.
Then there was the noise of someone being violently sick Ч a choking, tearing sound that went on and on until J.B. pushed the Fast Forward button again. Don Haggard never reappeared, though the tape ran right on through to its end and automatically rewound itself.
"Going to take it?" asked the Armorer.
"No. Like robbing a grave. Not right. Leave it here."
They switched off everything, gently pulling the door shut and climbing out into the cool of the late evening. Ryan lowered the exit hatch, swinging the wheel-lock on it, making sure that no casual predator would disturb the last resting place of Don and Peggy Haggard of West Lowellton, Louisiana.
They returned to the Adelphi Cinema without incident and rejoined Jak Lauren in good time for the last fire-fight.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ryan was impressed with the regimented hold that the fourteen-year-old boy had over his small army. Jak had ordered silence, and that was what he got. Each man and woman understood his or her role in the assault; they oiled and greased their weapons, and carefully wrapped rags around them to prevent noise. A few of the men checked the captured swampwag to make sure the steering was smooth.
The heavy casks of napalm were loaded into the rear of the buggy, the tops having been painstakingly cut off by hand. Old blankets were wadded between them to stop them from rolling and clattering.
Under the direction of J. B. Dix, grens were wired to various points around the swampwag, their pins secured with loops of fishing line, cut to an agreed length of 120 yards.
Just after midnight, they were ready to go.
Baron Tourment hadn't yet returned to the cellar. Bound and helpless, the girls lay in total darkness with only the rhythmic clunking of the nearby ice machine and the distant chattering of one of the elevators to break the stillness.
They talked for a while. Krysty tried to keep the younger girl's spirits up, telling her that Ryan and Doc and the others would surely come for them. Eventually, around midnight, both of them managed to fall asleep.
The gears set in neutral, the buggy, pushed by teams of fighters, rolled on its massive tires. The tall woman with the jagged scar across her neck sat at the controls. She was reputedly the best driver in the small army, and the success or failure of the first part of the plan depended upon her skill and nerve and timing.
Finn walked with two of the older men, all three of them carrying flamers. Tanks of propellant, with a nozzle like a garden hose, were supported across their shoulders by a web of faded canvas strapping.
"You sure that slope's steep enough at the front?" asked J. B. Dix.
"Yeah. There's a hill out of sight of the motel. We get it there and then let her go. By the time they see it coming, speed'll be well up. Too fucking late to do much. Leah jumps, and Finn and his men get to work."
It took them close on two hours, with stops for frequent pauses for everyone to gather breath. Even Doc insisted on taking his share of heaving at the lumbering vehicle, though it nearly exhausted him. His ebony sword stick was in his belt, the massive Le Mat pistol, over two hundred years old, in its holster.
Krysty dreamed that she lay in an archaic wooden wagon, with a fluttering top of white material. It was set amongst a grove of green-leaved sycamores, with sunbaked fields all around it. There were men, women and children, hunkered down in the grass behind the wagon, in old-fashioned clothes. The women in long cotton dresses and poke bonnets. Dark suits for the men. By another wagon she saw four men and a boy, loading antique blasters, laughing as they did so. Somehow, though there was no enemy in sight, Krysty knew that a battle was about to go down. A bloody firefight against a superior force.