Vampire Hunter D Volume 18- Fortress of the Elder God (2 page)

“Sorry, baby, but could you scoot over a bit?”

When that well-tanned face bared its pearly white teeth to her, the woman responded with a wry look of undisguised annoyance.

“There are plenty of other empty seats. I don’t want you crowding me.”

“Oh, don’t be that way. To make a long story short, we’re taking our lives in our hands during this flight. If I’m gonna die, I wanna be beside a lovely lady. Humor me, okay?”

More than his forceful approach, it was probably his carefree smile that changed the woman’s mind. Swinging her legs into the aisle, she said, “Take the window seat.”

“That’s mighty kind of you. I’m Jan.”

“And I’m not giving you my name,” the woman said, downing the contents of her little silver cup.

The man—Jan—quickly made his way to the window seat and was fastening the rubber seat belt when he gave her a funny look and a smile and said, “No problem, Maria, baby!”

The woman’s expression changed.

“Your stole. It’s embroidered there.”

“Oh, this thing?” the woman replied, looking down at one end where the metallic threads were coming loose. “That’s not my name. It belongs to the woman who lost it to me at the gaming tables. She was a fat farmer’s wife.”

“Well, that’s okay. If it doesn’t bother you none, I’ll still call you that.”

“Suit yourself. Whether you know my name or not won’t make a bit of difference.”

The engine began to growl.

Peeking back between the seats, Jan said to Maria, “Strange mix we got here. Don’t you think?”

Apparently he made a habit of soliciting agreement from other people. As the woman made no reply but rather kept drinking as if in a foul mood, he went on talking.

“That kid’s keeper never did come back. For a nun, of all people, to pull something so irresponsible, either the kid’s got his act together so well there’s no need to worry, or it’s the complete opposite. My take on it is, he’s a major problem child. When no one sees you off, it’s because they just want you gone. I don’t know if he’s got someone waiting for him on the other end, but he’d be a handful for anyone, that’s for sure. I mean, that nun was from the freaking Shillonget Monastery. To get tossed out of there, you’d have to be a real piece of work. There’s a medallion around his neck. It’s probably got all the details carved into it, and I wouldn’t mind a peek at that.”

While the mobster was blithering, the skybus had slowly started to glide down the runway. The scenery—a mossy old landing strip, decaying hangars, and a distant mountain range—began to race past the windows faster and faster.

While Jan gave his tongue a rest, the aircraft made expert use of rising air currents to climb to sixteen thousand feet and enter the jet stream.

“It looks like we’re in, all right,” the old man looking out the window said softly to his wife, who sat beside him with her hands pressed to her chest. “Now it’s just a straight shot to the Capital. Pare should be meeting us at the airport. Are you in pain, dear?”

“I’m fine,” his elderly wife replied, a smile gracing her paling face. “This happens every time. But will Pare really be coming?”

“Of course. I wrote to him, and we got a reply at the hotel, didn’t we? He’s a good boy, that one is. Unlike Depp.”

“Depp is just honest, that’s all. No one’s happy to have over a couple of old relics like us, whether they’re our sons or not.”

“That’s not true. After everything you and I did for those boys—”

Though the elderly man’s hoary eyebrows arched, his wife replied wearily, “Pare’s the kindest of the bunch. He won’t come out and say it—but we’re inconveniencing him. Once we’re in the Capital, let’s find a cheap hotel and stay there instead. That’d be easier on all of us.”

“There’s no need to do that. You know how hard we worked for—”

The old man’s eyes were bulging, but he relaxed when he saw his wife’s doleful expression. Taking a deep breath, he rolled back through his memories.

“Inge and Pages were both happy to see us, weren’t they? Depp, well, that was another story, but Pare—”

Suddenly he noticed that his wife had opened her eyes and was staring intently at him.

“What is it, dear?”

“Nothing,” the old woman said with a sad shake of her head. She wanted to tell him he was wrong. “Not a thing. You’re right. They’ve all been so good to us, haven’t they?”

“They sure have.”

Happy that his wife had finally agreed with him, the elderly man nodded repeatedly.

His aged wife managed to keep the hopeless smile on her face as she gazed at her husband, saying, “We pass over the Playground, don’t we?”

It wasn’t really a question. Though the old man sensed something terribly disconsolate in her tone, he’d long since lost the desire to try to discover what that was.

“Yes, we do,” he replied, turning his gaze to the window again.

Their fourth son would be coming to meet them.

With unsettling creaks here and there, the skybus continued flying smoothly at a speed of 330 miles per hour.

A tiny whisper rose in the aircraft’s silent interior: “Soon now.” While it wasn’t loud enough that the person in the neighboring seat could hear it, almost everyone there trembled.

At that instant, something happened—a heartbeat later, the skybus was thrown off balance, slipping from the jet stream and dropping toward the ground at an angle sharper than any dive.

-

II

-

“What in theworld? He’s kicked the bucket!”

Though he heard Maria say this, Jan didn’t believe her, so he took the pilot’s pulse and felt for a heartbeat before letting go of his wrist again.

“Now we don’t have anyone to fly the skybus. Or am I wrong, and one of you can pilot this thing?”

The mobster looked over his shoulder at the survivors—all of the passengers—but naturally, there was no reply.

Apparently the nameless pilot had been highly skilled, taking the skybus from a fall that was essentially a vertical tailspin and pulling the nose up at the last minute for a landing that would’ve been considered miraculous on level ground, let alone this rocky expanse.

However, the miracle ended there, and the reality was that the passengers scattered across the rocks had sustained very real injuries. The old man’s left arm had been broken, and after finally pulling the first-aid kit from the somewhat-damaged skybus, Maria and the sheriff were in the process of setting it in a splint. The policeman, who was far younger than the sheriff, had suffered some bruising to his right shoulder, but he had nothing more than a damp cloth to put on it for the pain. The impact after their fall had left the liquid contents of the jar of painkillers splattered against the bottom of the kit.

Though both the boy and the warrior were unharmed, one had gone over to lean against a massive crag and not moved any further, while the other simply stood there scanning the area in all directions.

“Any of you folks familiar with the local geography?” the sheriff asked, looking over the group.

Grimacing, Jan said, “That’d have to be you.”

“I suppose it would,” the sheriff said, a wry look coming to his face, above his triple chins, before he surveyed their surroundings. He’d already looked the scenery over a good ten times, and not a blessed thing had changed. It was a wasteland strewn with boulders as far as the eye could see. There wasn’t a speck of greenery, but there was plenty of wind to slice into them like a knife. It came across the distant yellow expanse of sand. Before them towered steep crags.

It was just past three o’clock Afternoon. Though there was still plenty of light, once that was gone it’d be like a winter’s day in no time at all. It wouldn’t even take an hour.

After checking the time with his wristwatch, the sheriff looked up at the sun to judge position, as was often done on the Frontier, giving a nod as he said, “We could pull the equipment out of the skybus to figure out where we are, but basically this is the center of the Playground. No matter which way we try to go, it’ll be the same distance out of here.”

“So which direction is the safest?” asked Jan. There was hostility in his tone. Lawmen were the sworn enemy of mobsters, after all.

“They’re all the same,” the sheriff answered off the cuff. “If the village where we boarded had a Danger Potential rating of one, this whole region would have to be over one hundred thousand DP.”

“Then shouldn’t we hurry up and head for the Capital?” the pale-faced policeman said with urgency. “Most of us are alive, and there’s a little food and water left in the skybus. We should be trying to get out of this hellhole as fast as we can.”

“You suggesting we cross the Playground without a car?” Jan jeered. “I’m sure you’re a big man back in the Capital, but do you have any idea what kind of place the Nobility made this Playground of theirs? You know, I’m surprised we’ve lasted this long. They’re already wise to us. If they wanted to, they could tear us to pieces right now. When you think about it, staying or going is pretty much the same.”

The young policeman decided to meet the mobster head on. Eyes squinting angrily, he said, “I’d expect a lousy thug like you to be that ignorant. This is known as the E3 Playground, and aerial photos of this region are taken on a regular basis. According to them, no life forms exist out here.”

“Can they tell from the sky what’s underground, buddy?” Jan snapped back. “Legend has it these things will wait thousands of years without moving a muscle, just biding their time until some stupid prey like us come into their domain. Aerial photos? Don’t make me laugh!”

“You lousy smartass!”

The policeman used his uninjured left hand to go for the pistol on his weapons belt, while Jan said, “Hey, now,” and reached for his broadsword. Tension coalesced around the two of them.

“That’ll be enough of that,” a rusty voice interrupted, and it sounded like a fitting arbitrator.

Everyone turned in unison toward the speaker, relieved expressions on their faces. At last, they thought.

“Until we get out of here, we need everyone we can get,” the warrior said. His crimson scarf danced in the breeze.

The policeman twisted his lips as if to say, Is this guy against me, too? “This region is safe. There’s nothing here. You’re all frightened by unfounded legends.”

“Those same legends will keep rescuers from coming,” the warrior said.

This silenced the policeman.

Entry into the Playground for any reason was prohibited—parents weren’t even allowed to run out there in search of a child who’d wandered into it. Going in to rescue a skybus that had made an emergency landing was out of the question. They could send a distress signal, shoot off flares, or even spell out help on the ground with their bodies, but still no one would come.

“The Playground is laid out as an almost-perfect circle three hundred miles in diameter. To cross it on foot, taking into account the speed of women and children, would take a good twenty days. And with the number of people we’ve got here, our food and water won’t last two days, no matter how we ration it. That’s why we can’t afford to lose anyone to a stupid scuffle.”

“Why not?” Maria asked, sounding slightly unsettled.

The answer was perfectly simple.

“We might have to eat them.”

At this, everyone’s expression became one of horror. No one could say a word.

Looking overhead, the warrior said, “The sun will be going down soon, and the temperature will drop below freezing. You lose a lot of strength then, too. So I’ll thank you to see that we don’t lose any possibly vital sources of nutrition.”

“Guess we’ll be camping out today,” the sheriff groaned, looking up at the sky.

Nodding, the warrior said, “Yes, and there’s one thing we have to take care of before we set out. You must know what that is. Why did our skybus go down?”

Up until this point, the elderly couple had been intently listening to what the warrior had to say, but as their eyes burned with curiosity, their expressions froze.

“What do you think, Ms. Maria?”

As the warrior singled her out, the woman turned away in a snit.

“I don’t care to have people use my name so freely. What’s yours, anyway?”

“Begging your pardon. I’m Bierce—a warrior.”

It was unclear if his response improved Maria’s mood any, because she continued to look away from him as she said, “I get the feeling I saw something, but I can’t remember anything about it. All I know is what I felt. And that was fear itself.”

That caused a stir in the group. Everyone—except the boy and the suckling—agreed with her.

“That’s right. That’s exactly what killed the pilot and made the skybus crash. But how did it happen?”

This time silence tightened around the group. At that moment, they once again felt the same “fear itself” that Maria had mentioned. Letting out an inhuman cry, the old woman clung to her husband. The mobster and the policeman closed their eyes and quaked as if fighting great pain, and beads of sweat rose on the sheriff’s face.

A terror that could smash through even the strongest mind. Where did such a thing come from?