James Axler - Ice and Fire

"Come out of it, Richard," she said, lips barely moving.

"Trapped in my crippled body in a twisted, demented time," he moaned, fingers tightening on her hand.

"No." She drew on some lines that her mother had made her learn. "There is a wind on the heath, my brother. Life is very sweet. Who would wish to die?"

"Everyone I loved is dust," he said quietly, the words hardly disturbing the warm air in the small room.

"We all will be, Rick. One day. You and me and Ryan and everyone. Today's baby is tomorrow's dust. Live while you can, Rick. Live and live and live."

His eyes had been staring at the roughly plastered ceiling. As Krysty looked at the freezie, his face grew calmer. His gaze dropped, settling on her face. His breathing steadied, and there was something like the frail ghost of a normal, sane smile.

"Krysty Wroth, I believe?"

"Richard Neal Ginsberg, isn't it?"

"Guess it is."

"Good to have you back," she said, feeling the strain of drawing the demons from the helpless man's soul.

"Didn't much care for the places I've been. Too damned dark."

"It's dark out, Rick."

"Light in here. Light and warm, Krysty. I feel real tired."

"Yeah. Me too."

Ryan had been sitting with the others, relaxing, half-asleep.

After an hour had slipped by he sighed and stood, stretching, feeling the muscles around his ribs tightening as he moved. "Just going to take a look," he said.

As he stepped into the corridor he nearly jumped out of his skin. His fist clenched and he began a lethal, crushing blow to the bridge of the nose, checking his punch in time, inches short of the sharp, quill-like nose of Ruby Rainer.

"Shedskin!" she exclaimed, stumbling back, hands waving at the air. "You were going to hit me, Mr. Cawdor!"

"No, ma'am," he replied. "If I'd been going to hit you, then I'd have done it. Not a good idea to creep up on a person like that, Mrs. Rainer. Could lead to a nasty accident."

She recovered a little, brushing at her print apron, running a finger along the top of the bannister rail, checking it for dust. "That girl, Rosemary! She never cleans up... But that wasn't what I came up to see about."

"And what was that?"

"Is Mr. Ginsberg recovered? I hope he'll be at the seven o'clock service on the morrow. It would be such a disappointment if he missed it."

"Just going to check. I hope we'll all be there."

He watched her go slowly down the stairs before he eased open the door and peeked in. Rick Ginsberg lay fast asleep on his bed, breathing peacefully. Krysty slept at his side, holding his hand.

Ryan smiled and very quietly closed the bedroom door.

"Blessed is the worm!"

"And blessed are the scales thereof!"

"Blessed be the fang!"

"And the hollow needle!"

"Blessed is the crushing and the coil!"

"And blessed are the rattle and the skin of the great worms!"

"The Lord loves the worms of the earth and all that crawl and sting."

"As we do also love them!"

"The poison shall harm only the ungodly and the righteous sacrifice!"

"And the innocent shall walk untouched through all the lands of Canaan."

"As it was in the beginning, before sky-dark and long winter, is now and ever shall be. Our world, never ending. Amen!"

"Amen," came the echoing chorus from the huge congregation that brimmed along every bench and pew in the Temple of Snakefish, formerly the Rex Cinema and Video Palace.

One of the twin guardians, Norman Mote, had just finished the introductory call-and-response part of the a.m. service. Marianne sat at his side, with their son Joshua, the apostolic apprentice, next to his mother.

At a rough count, Ryan reckoned that virtually all the adult population of the trim little ville was there, crammed together, cheek by jowl.

It was swelteringly, sweatingly hot inside the building.

Ruby Rainer had shouted up the stairs, a few minutes after six, asking if they wanted some fresh-baked cornbread with eggs and grits before coming along to the service. They had all accepted, though Rick made heavy weather of the meal.

The freezie was looking better, like someone who had been through the fire and come out the other side purged and cleansed by the experience.

He'd walked with the others along the bustling main street to the church, helped by an old bamboo cane with a curved handle, which had been a gift from their landlady. "It was my late husband's," she'd said. "He got it from his uncle, who found it in a ruined shack up beyond the north-forty well. You're welcome to take it, Mr. Ginsberg."

Ryan had rarely seen so many people gathered together in one place.

Baron Edgar Brennan sat in the front pew, on the right with his brother Rufus. An enormously fat young man sat next along. Ryan figured he must be the nephew, Layton, pilot of the air wag. He was dressed in a suit of dark blue leather and was so large that it looked as though the bench seat might tip up if anyone else stood. The last of the worshipers in that privileged pew was Carla Petersen, who had changed her riding breeches for a pleated skirt, but was otherwise wearing the same clothes as when they'd met her in the town hall. She had turned around as Ryan led his group in, favoring them with a smile. A smile that seemed, to Ryan, to be directed rather more at J.B. than at the rest of them.

There were no children in the congregation. No one showed undue interest in the outlanders as they were shown to a bench on the left, about halfway from the front.

Zombie and his biker brothers acted as stewards, marshaling everyone into their seats, making sure that there was no smoking. They eventually lined up near the altar, looking like sec bouncers at a particularly unsalubrious gaudy house.

Ryan had been particularly interested in seeing what the Mote family looked like. Before the festivities had begun, during the period of waiting for their arrival, he had studied the inside of their strange church.

There was a large balcony toward the rear, which had been extended more recently to run around both sides of the old theater. The altar was on a dais, between old and faded curtains decorated with huge, golden tassels. The chairs for the members of the Mote family were more like thrones, covered in gilt and crudely carved in ornate, writhing snake shapes. The rear wall, behind the platform, was obscured by a bright mural.

"Delicate, isn't it, lover?" Krysty whispered, seeing where Ryan's eye was focused.

"Sure. Like having a war wag run over your face is delicate."

The painting centered on an absolutely massive mutie rattler. Bigger by far than the one that they'd butchered out in the desert, it had a silver collar with the name Mote blazoned across it in scarlet. In its jaws was a diminutive figure that was kicking its legs. There was a 3-D holo effect built into it that made the head swing hypnotically from side to side and the tiny feet wave helplessly.

Around the edge of the picture were a number of oil-drilling rigs, vanishing away into a distance that was blurred by a poor perspective. At the very edge there was a crude version of the Sierras, snowcapped, tumbling out of the mural.

The colors were extremely basic — glaring greens and crimsons, with sickly yellows and a sky of an eye-blinking and unreal blue.

Ryan's ruminations stopped suddenly when he realized that the prayers were over and Norman Mote was about to speak.

He stood a little above average height and weighed about two-forty. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, the mane of sculpted hair a uniform silver gray. His suit was also in light gray, skillfully cut to conceal his spreading waist and stubby legs. He had the puffy eyes of a regular and long-time drinker. The hands that gestured from behind the reading stand were soft and white, with manicured nails.