James Axler - Baptism Of Rage

When Daisy turned back to Doc, who was still puzzling over the meaning of her display, she spoke in a less intense manner, friendly and buoyant once more. “You get old,” she explained, “and things die. Parts of you die. Your taste, your hearin’, your eyes, your sense of smell. You lose things, senses, and you don’t never even notice. Because it takes such a long time to happen, you don’t never see it till it’s too late. You go back, you get youngered and it all comes back, Mr. Tanner. It all comes back and you wonder how you ever managed without it, like some cripple who can’t even dress himself. Those stories about being superhuman—they’re not stories. That’s what it is to be young. The longer you live, the less alive you are.”

Doc looked at her, this simple farming girl, old yet young, wondering at her words, marveling at them.

“Giddy,” Daisy continued, “running in the summer until you fall down—that’s not it at all. You just got too old to remember what it’s really like, is all.”

Doc nodded thoughtfully. “I remember now,” he said, “or, at least, I begin to.”

He sat there, lost in his thoughts as Daisy wrapped her delicate fingers over the new glass of fruit punch that had been brought over by the man with the haunted expression. Jeremiah Croxton leaned across to Doc, tapping him gently just below the shoulder. Doc glanced up, and seemed surprised for a second to find himself looking at the man.

“Mr. Tanner,” Croxton began, “I would like to discuss a proposition that I feel would be of mutual benefit.”

Turning to the old farmer, Doc listened intently to the man’s words.

J.B. peered over Ryan’s shoulder at the pair of wide tables across the other side of the room, where Doc was held in discussion with the people from the convoy. “What the heck is Doc up to?” he muttered, shaking his head in disbelief.

Mildred was just walking across the room to join Ryan and the others, her brow wrinkled with concern. Ryan peered up as her shadow fell across their table. “What’s happening, Mildred?” he asked.

Still standing, Mildred leaned close, keeping her voice low so as not to be overheard, even in spite of the clashing chords emanating from the piano. “Those travelers we helped out invited us all over to offer a few words of gratitude,” she explained.

“Tell them thanks,” J.B. growled.

“The spokesman,” Mildred continued, “that old boy you see there, he says he has a proposition that may interest Doc. Perhaps the rest of us, too.”

Ryan looked nonplussed. “Which is?”

“Search me,” Mildred said lightly. “Seems he wanted to run it by Doc first.”

“What’s your impression?” Ryan asked.

“They seem normal enough,” Mildred stated. “Mostly old folks. Couple of young ones, too, nothing out of the ordinary.”

Krysty was scanning the strangers from her position against the wall. “They’re only lightly armed,” she observed. “Real lightly for traveling folks. Kind of stupe.”

Sitting beside Ryan, Jak nodded. “Not travelers,” he said. “Farmers. Smell it.”

J.B. nodded once in agreement. “Jak’s right, those folks don’t look much used to hard road trekkin’. Probably why they got caught short against those mutie hounds outside.”

Shortly after Mildred had taken her seat, Doc strode to the table, followed by the thin serving girl with the burn scars along her arms. The girl was balancing four steaming bowls on a tray, and she smiled and shook her head as Doc kindly offered her a hand.

The old man took his seat as the girl set the bowls in front of the companions and began placing mismatched cutlery before them. “I’ll be back in a second with the others,” she drawled, curtsying briefly before she went back to her cooking alcove.

As the serving girl walked away, Doc related his conversation with Jeremiah Croxton to the companions. “They were all tremendously impressed with—and grateful for—our assistance outside,” Doc explained, “and Mr. Croxton has asked if we might avail our services for the duration of their journey.”

“As sec men, you mean?” Ryan asked.

Doc nodded, idly brushing a hand through his white hair as the serving girl returned with two more bowls of the aromatic stew. “Thank you, my dear,” Doc said to the girl. The bowls steamed as she set them down on the table before Doc and Ryan.

“If ya’s need anything else,” the girl said, “j’st holler an’ I’ll come right over.”

Jak was already working a spoon through the thick gravy in his bowl, and he looked up at the girl with his unearthly smile. “Good,” he said. “Meat’s good.”

Disconcerted, the girl thanked Jak and the others before scurrying back to her nook at the side of the bar. She stood there, her eyes on the strange young albino, watching him warily.

“What sort of meat is it, Jak?” Krysty asked as she pushed the contents of the bowl before her around with a fork.

Jak chewed for a moment, working the spiced meat around his palate. “Goat,” he decided, grinning contentedly.

Once the companions had started on their own bowls of stew, Doc continued relating Croxton’s request. “They have got a two-day journey ahead of them,” he said, “or so Croxton thinks. They have been on the road over a day, hard going, too, I should think.”

Ryan peered up from the contents of his bowl. “Where are they heading, Doc? Did he say?”

“A little ville called Baby,” Doc said.

Ryan’s eye flicked across the table to J.B. the custodian of the group’s maps and navigation equipment. “Heard of it, J.B.?”

After a few seconds thought, the Armorer shook his head. “Name like that would surely stick in my craw tighter than dynamite in a pesthole,” he said. “New villes are popping up and falling down all the time, Ryan. Just ’cause I haven’t heard of it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

Ryan nodded. “I didn’t say it wasn’t,” he agreed, before turning his attention back to Doc as the old man picked his way carefully through his stew with a bent-handled spoon. “So what’s your angle on this, Doc? They putting up a lot of jack?”

“No,” Doc said between mouthfuls, shaking his head. “Something far more interesting than money. They’re promising youth.”

“Youth?” The word came from three people at once, as Mildred, Krysty and Ryan all uttered it with incredulity.

“The pretty little blonde girl over on the left-hand side of the table there…?” Doc said, looking up but not pointing. “Says she’s seventy-six years old. Came out of Babyville to spread the word. Seems they have the secret of eternal youth there.”

J.B. barked a short laugh at Doc’s words. “And you believe this horseshit they’re feeding you?”

Doc looked at the glistening sheen of grease on top his half-full bowl before slowly replying in a considered, deliberate voice. “I neither believe nor disbelieve, my dear John Barrymore. My natural inclination is to disbelieve, of course, for such a thing would seem fanciful, not to say impossible. But the old fables are full of youth-giving potions, immortals and the rejuvenating effects of such-and-such mixture of herbs. The fountain of eternal youth may very well be a story, but might we suppose that it could have been rooted in fact?”

J.B. shook his head in disbelief, while Ryan and the others sat considering the white-haired man’s words.

Krysty was the one who finally broke the silence. “We have seen some mighty strange things in our travels,” she said, “most of them not a blamed bit of use to anyone. Who’s to say that Doc’s youth fountain doesn’t actually exist somewhere?”

“It’s impossible,” J.B. observed. “Doc just said so himself.”