Dark Resurrection

No sooner than the gruesome butcher job was done, a second slave was unhooked and bum-rushed to a nearly identical death.

As Ryan watched the next man in line dragged off to meet the point of a knife, he saw the priests were taking turns in the chilling duties, so as not to overtax themselves. All but the hairless spider, who was chanting in a nasal singsong and doing a little shuffle-foot dance behind them. High Pile made another check mark in his little book before consigning a fourth prisoner to the same fate. The courtyard echoed with shrill screams and the cheers of the red sash audience.

Were they going to sacrifice all the slaves? Ryan asked himself. His companions were still a good ways back in the file. For the first time, he saw the possibility that he might actually outlive them, spared from death for another day; and worse, that he would be forced to stand by and watch them all slaughtered.

That was not something he could accept.

He had tested his manacles so many times since their capture that he had worn away the skin of his wrists, but he tested them again, anyway.

Mind working in overdrive, he tried to see a way clear. If he could overwhelm the pair of pirates guarding him, then what? Chill the Matachìn with their own blasters, allowing the slaves to flee? Even if he managed to do that, the only way to get out from under the sights of the red sashes along the battlements was to make it inside the hard cover of the colonnades. But the prisoners were chained together. They’d have to all pass through the same archway, which meant instead of ten exits to cover, the red sashes would only have one. They could concentrate fire. It would be a turkey shoot.

Escape was impossible against these odds on this terrain, Ryan concluded.

As High Pile advanced down the line of the condemned, the piles of corpses and severed hearts grew. Realizing what was coming, the slaves struggled futilely with their bonds, weeping and begging their captors for mercy.

All but the companions.

Jak, Krysty, Mildred, Doc and J.B. were staring at Ryan. Their fixed, defiant expressions all said the same thing: we’re not going to check out like that. Not like chickens on the chopping block.

The one-eyed warrior nodded in agreement, then he looked away. If they couldn’t escape, they could do the next best thing. They could take out as many of the bastards as possible before they were cut down.

Ryan Cawdor withdrew deep into the core of his being, shutting out the grisly sights and sounds around him. He wasn’t preparing himself to die, he was preparing to fight and chill to his last ounce of strength. To expend it all, here, now. And when that strength was gone, death could nukin’ have him, ready or not. It took only a moment for him to make the attitude shift: it was like a gate swinging open, and when it was done, Ryan felt a sense of freedom and power.

The hairless spider was gathering dripping lumps of muscle in a wicker basket as High Pile stepped up to Jak, who was next in line for sacrifice. Ryan knew the pirates weren’t going to discount the albino because of his size or mutie appearance. Just the opposite. They’d already seen him in action with a commandeered machete. One of them put a submachine-gun muzzle to the back of Jak’s head before they unfastened his ankle chains from the others.

Ryan planned to make his play the moment the pirates started to rush Jak forward to his doom. When they pulled the albino youth to the side instead, he held back. One by one, High Pile ordered the companions released from the file and moved over to join Jak. They were then rechained together at the ankles. After J.B. was linked to the others, the next slave in line, to his surprise and dismay, got the standard dagger treatment.

The companions glanced at Ryan again, wanting the go signal.

He shook his head. It looked like they weren’t going to be slaughtered along with the rest. It appeared their captors had other plans for them, which changed everything as far as he was concerned.

A pirate approached High Pile with a heavy, blanket-wrapped bundle. The captain ordered the man to untie it and lay it out on the ground at Fright Mask’s boots. When the bundle was opened, Ryan saw it held his scoped Steyr longblaster, J.B.’s scattergun and the rest of their weapons.

Trophies of conquest.

Or mebbe objects of ridicule.

Fright Mask got a big laugh over the LeMat. After inspecting it closely, he held Doc’s black-powder blaster by the barrels and swung its butt like a hammer head into his palm—as if pounding nails was all it was good for. He tossed the antique pistol back onto the blanket, which the pirate rolled up and retied.

High Pile waved the blaster-bearer ahead of him, through a white stone archway toward the dock and sailing ship beyond. Surrounded by Matachìn, Krysty, Jak, Mildred, Doc and J.B. were then shoved in that direction. They looked back over their shoulders at Ryan one last time, still awaiting his signal for them to act.

He shook his head. A final emphatic no.

It was also a goodbye.

The companions disappeared from sight.

Ryan had no clue where they were being taken or why. But whatever fate held in store for the others, the odds had to be better than what they faced here. If they still had a chance to survive, they had to leave him behind and take it.

The sacrificial chilling of the galley slaves continued as his pirate escort spun him the opposite way and forced him to walk under the red brick colonnade. They followed a dimly lit passage that led through the fort’s exterior wall, and out the door of a cylindrical guardpost.

In front of Ryan was a floodlit stone bridge, wider and more ornate than the first he’d crossed, and twice as long. This one was painted pale yellow and decorated with stout pairs of pillars at both ends. It led to a separate island, which was completely covered by a ravelin half as large as the courtyard they’d just left. The three-story structure was shaped like a triangle, or an arrowhead, pointing away from the bridge. Above the arched entryway were more crenelated battlements. There were only two windows that Ryan could see. The rest was smooth, featureless stone.

There was no doubt in Ryan’s mind that what lay at the far end of the bridge was the epicenter of the bad juju he’d sensed earlier.

A death camp for the ages.

As they mounted the bridge, Ryan considered and rejected his options. Even though it was way easier for one man to slip through a crack than six, the pirates had him cold—at least for the moment. Without a diversion, he’d never get the jump on them, never get his hands on a blaster, never get righteous payback. And trying to swim away chained hand and foot, assuming he could dive over the bridge wall before they caught him, was suicide.

The pirates marched him through the prison entrance and into a stone-walled anteroom. A half dozen red-sashed guards awaited his arrival. Two of them immediately took up long wooden poles, which had metal hoops attached to one end.

While the Matachìn pinioned his arms and two red sashes aimed double barrels at his chest, the poles were extended, front and rear, and the hoops slipped over his head and down past his chin. The red sashes then pulled on straps at the ends of the poles, drawing the steel bands so tight around his throat that he could hardly breathe.

When the Matachìn released his arms, the men holding the poles were in total control of him. The rods were so long, he couldn’t reach them with fists or feet. The leverage they offered made it easy for his captors to drive him to his knees, if they wished. And if that didn’t tame him, they could tighten the nooses even more and choke him into unconsciousness.

With a pole-bearing red sash in front and one behind, Ryan was simultaneously pushed and pulled forward, through a floor-to-ceiling iron gate. He entered a labyrinth of stone, and stifling heat and humidity. The walls and floors were warped and worn. There were standing puddles of unidentifiable fluid everywhere.

To his left were rows of passages, presumably the cell blocks, stretching off into the dark. From that direction he heard moaning.

When they passed by one of the cramped cells, Ryan saw it had no bed. It had no water. No toilet. No window to let in air or natural light. It reeked of urine and rotting flesh. A human form lay huddled and hidden under a pile of rags on the damp stone floor. There were rats inside the cell. They were merrily burrowing under the rags, feeding on the dead or the nearly dead prisoner. When Ryan looked farther down the passage, in the faint light he saw rats scurrying in bands of a dozen or more, darting back and forth across the corridor, between the cells.

At that moment he knew that few if any had ever returned from this awful place.

It wasn’t just a prison.

It was a tomb.

They continued on until they reached the very heart of the darkness, the place that was the hottest, the rankest, the most oppressive, the core of the man-made hellhole. With double barrels pointed at his head, Ryan was uncollared and booted into an already occupied cell. The iron-barred gate clanged shut behind him. Their work done, the red sashes turned away and left him to get acquainted with his cell mate.

The other prisoner squatted with his back pressed into a corner, his head lowered, his long black hair hanging down over his face. He appeared to be naked except for his chains. The weak light from the single overhead bulb threw him in deep shadow. As Ryan took in the bleak cell, he noticed the stalagmites on the floor, white beestings of calcite that had dripped from the ceiling. When he stepped closer, his fellow prisoner stirred and slowly raised his face to the light.

For the second time in as many hours Ryan exclaimed, “What the fuck!”

His words echoed in the gloom.

Then a disembodied voice whispered in his ear, “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

The words seemed to have come from behind him. Ryan whirled, but there was no one there, only the sweating limestone wall.

When he turned back, the deadpan expression of his mirror image had transformed into a wide grin.

Chapter Six

Doc Tanner wept as he was force-marched across the stone dock toward the waiting black schooner. He cried without making a sound, tears streaming freely down the seams in his weathered face. Even if he lived forever, he knew he would never see the likes of Ryan Cawdor again. He cried for his brave and noble friend, and for his own accursed helplessness under the circumstances. The unstoppable flow of tears also came from sheer exhaustion, from three weeks chained to an oar and from the all-out brawl they’d just lost in Veracruz.

“We’ve got to do something,” Krysty declared to the others as the iron-hulled ship’s gangway was swung out and lowered to the dock. “We can’t let these evil bastards chill him.”

“Not leave Ryan here,” Jak growled in assent.

“And what, pray tell, are our other options at present?” Doc asked, wiping his eyes with the backs of fight-bruised, manacled hands. “We cannot rescue him if we cannot rescue ourselves.”

“We need a window of opportunity to turn things in our favor,” Mildred said.

“A lowering of the rad-blasted odds would be an excellent start,” J.B. added.

“We still have time,” Mildred assured them earnestly. “We could—”

“¡Silencio!” one of the pirates growled.

High Pile mounted the gangway first and strode onto the aft deck of the black schooner.

There to greet him was a tall, thin man and two short, round women. All of them wore clean, starched white coats. All were as brown as coffee berries. They smiled hopefully as the Matachìn stepped up to them.

High Pile dismissed the trio with an impatient snort. He brushed past the whitecoats without a word, stepped down into the cockpit and disappeared belowdecks.

Doc realized at that moment that whatever the captain’s new mission was, he did not particularly relish it.

The whitecoat man waved the prisoners and their pirate escort aboard.

The black ship was much bigger than Tempest, easily twice as long, and half again as wide across the beam. The hull was riveted metal plate; the masts and superstructure were made of wood. It was a type of vessel Doc was very familiar with. During his first life in Victorian times, similar oceangoing, commercial sailing ships, barks and schooners, were still plying the world’s seas.

When the companions were assembled along the starboard rail, the male whitecoat spoke in soothing tones. He said, “Soy médico. Mi chiamo Montejo.” He had slicked-back black hair, and a profile dominated by a long, hawkish nose.

Doc translated for the others. “He says he’s a physician. Dr. Montejo.”

The hatchet-faced man prattled on in Spanish, actually wringing his hands in eagerness, this while the pair of chubby-cheeked whitecoat women beamed up at him with pride.

“The other two are his medical assistants,” Doc said, resuming the translation. “He says they understand the terrible ordeal we’ve all been through, and that their job is to restore us to full health and vigor.”

“Do you believe this nukeshit!” J.B. said. “For almost a month they do their damnedest to chill us, now they want to take care of us?”

“The question is why?” Krysty said.

“Whatever the reason for the change of attitude,” Mildred said, “we’ve got to play along with it, at least temporarily.”

“I concur wholeheartedly,” Doc said. “This presents a golden opportunity to take our own back.”

The whitecoats led them down the companionway’s steel steps. The Matachìn escort followed behind, their weapons ready. Overhead, generator-powered light bulbs in metal cages faded in and out, from intensely bright to dim. Aft of the stairs, across the width of the stern, was the captain’s cabin; in front of them, under a low, sheet-metal ceiling was the ship’s mess. A long, metal-topped table was bracketed by bench seats. The floor was worn linoleum. Immediately they were enveloped by cooking smells from the galley—meat, beans, onions, garlic and savory spices.

The aromas made Doc’s mouth water and his head swim.

“Good grub,” Jak murmured.

“Mebbe the whitecoat wasn’t lying about the food, after all,” J.B. said.

“See if we get of it any this time,” Krysty said.

Beyond the mess, a bulkhead door opened onto a narrow corridor lined with riveted steel doors. Each door had a peephole on the outside so anyone in the corridor could look into the rooms.

At Dr. Montejo’s command, the pirates began to separate Krysty and Mildred from the others.

“¿Que pasa?” Mildred asked him.

The whitecoat responded to her through a big smile. The expression in his hooded eyes was romantic. An alarming bedside manner, to be sure.

“What did he say?” J.B. asked, glowering at the oblivious man.

“He said,” Mildred replied, “you two lovely ladies have been assigned a separate cabin for your comfort and privacy. Each stateroom has its own toilet and sink.”

Doc bristled at the idea of their being split up. It grievously complicated what they had to do, which was take command of the ship by force, and quickly. As they were still in chains and controlled at blasterpoint by the pirates, whether he liked it or not there was nothing to be done about it.

While Doc, Jak and J.B. waited in the corridor, Mildred and Krysty were ushered into a room on the right by the female whitecoats and three of the pirate guard. As the doorway was blocked by the male bodies, Doc couldn’t see what was going on inside. After a few moments, the whitecoats and pirate guard came out. Dr. Montejo pulled the door shut behind him and shot the slide bolts, top and bottom.

As if there was ever any doubt, Doc thought, this, too, was a prison ship.

Then Dr. Montejo opened a door on the left and waved for them to enter.

Doc stared into a low-ceilinged, windowless steel box, roughly ten by eight, illuminated by a pair of caged light bulbs. There were three built-in bunks along the left-hand wall, and a sink and a low, lidless toilet on the opposite side.

“Beats the rowing bench all to hell,” J.B. said.

The pirates roughly pushed them into the small room.

Dr. Montejo ordered the connecting chain removed, but left their ankle and hand manacles in place.

Jak shook his wrist chains in the man’s face. “These?” he said. “Like to wipe own butt.”

The whitecoat addressed them with open palms, in solicitous, dulcet tones.

Doc translated for his Spanish-challenged comrades. “The good doctor deeply apologizes for the continuing security measures, and assures us from the bottom of his heart they are only temporary. As soon as everything is secure, the ship will be leaving Veracruz, then we will have much more freedom. He says he knows we must be hungry and we will be fed shortly. After that, we will receive a complete physical examination and our wounds will be properly dressed.”

The smiling Montejo and the scowling pirates backed out of the cramped room. The door slammed and the locking bolts clacked shut.

“Trust no whitecoat,” Jak said. “All lying fuckers.”

“You’ll get no argument from me on that, dear boy,” Doc said. “I’d just as soon see them food for crows, dangling by their overstretched necks from every incandescent light pole…”

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