“At dark, when the cannies came back for me, I was shivering I was so ready to join the hunt. When they asked about easy pickings close by, I told them about a little dimmie boy I knew who lived with his pa on the other side of the swamp. I told them the dimmie was blond-haired and freckled—a couple weeks later I would’ve just called him a ‘hundred pounder.’ That’s gutted, hanging weight.
“I tricked the dimmie boy into coming out of his shack by standing at his window and calling his name real soft. He knew me from night fishing, so he didn’t suspect anything. I got him over to the edge of the woods and when his head was turned I whacked him on top of the head with a steel hatchet. I split his skull wide open with the first blow, before he could yell for help from his pa who was sitting in the shack, sipping joy juice, not fifty feet away. The dimmie was still twitching a little when me and the others dragged him deep into the thicket. We picked at his bones until dawn.
“One taste of long pig and I had to have more. I never went back home. Never saw my kin again. I’ve been on the Red Road ever since, with this pack and that.”
“Along the way looks like somebody managed to royally fuck you up,” Ryan said.
“Brother, the way you look, you must’ve pissed somebody off, too.”
Ryan shrugged.
“I got this face three years ago,” Junior said. “Dirt farmer heard our pack coming through her corn field and took her kids down in the root cellar to hide. We shot holes through the wooden door until we figured we must’ve nailed her. When I opened the hatch everything was quiet below, so I jumped down for a looksee. About then her oldest son cut loose with a black-powder handblaster. He got off one shot before I had hold of him. His pistol ball missed my head by a gnat’s ass, but the muzzle-flash caught me square in the peeper. Felt like hellfire burning into my brain. I screamed, but I didn’t let go. The others had to pry my fingers off the kid’s busted neck so they could fry him.”
“Maybe I should just go ahead and kill this filthy bastard,” Mildred said through gritted teeth.
“That’s your call,” Ryan said.
“Brother, your woman there isn’t telling you the whole story,” Junior informed him.
“About what?” Ryan said.
“The oozies.”
“Mildred, what’s he on about?”
“According to Junior, the oozies does more than chill,” she replied. “He claims it turns norms into cannies. The infection comes first, then strict cannibalism, and finally the array of debilitating symptoms leading to death.”
“Either of you ever see a norm with the oozies?” Junior added.
Ryan couldn’t say that he ever had. “Is that even possible?” he asked Mildred.
“Hypothetically, I suppose it is. If the oozie virus permanently alters the brain chemistry of its victims, it could affect sensory perception, ideation and ultimately behavior.”
“Nukin’ hell!” Ryan exclaimed as he followed that premise to its logical conclusion.
“You got it,” Mildred said. “If what Junior says is true, sooner or later, and long before I’m dead, I’ll end up just like him.”
“Not going to let that happen,” Ryan said. “No fucking way.” Rising to his feet, he unsheathed his panga. He leaned over one of the dead cannies and smeared the heavy blade with congealing blood.
“This what you want?” he asked Junior as he waved the bloody knife under his nose.
Whining, Junior craned his neck as far forward as he could. He opened his mouth wide and started to drool. The look on his face said he would have eaten his own hand if had he been able to reach it.
“Where did the oozie medicine come from?” Ryan said.
“For a lick, brother. I’ll tell you all about it for one little lick.”
“Answer the question, then mebbe I’ll give it to you.”
“Got the medicine down in the homeland. From La Golondrina.”
“What’s La Golondrina?”
“Who. She’s a who. Gimme my lick…” Junior thrust out a gray-coated tongue. Stretching. Stretching.
When Ryan pulled back the glistening panga, the cannie started to shake violently from head to foot. “Stop playing games, shitbag,” Cawdor said. “And spill it.”
“La Golondrina’s a freezie,” Junior hissed. “As far as anybody knows, she was the first case of the oozies. She came down with the sickness before the nukecaust. She was the very first cannie, too. Did some hunting on her own down in southern Siana until the predark law caught up with her. Law turned her over to the whitecoats for testing. They couldn’t cure her, and they were afraid the disease might somehow get out and spread. The legend says they put La Golondrina into some sort of deep sleep when she was in the last stages of dying. She was frozen, sort of. She woke up about a year ago, after there was some sort of malfunction. She still had the oozies, but it was too weak to chill her.”
“What’s that got to do with the medicine you took?” Ryan said.
“One drop of her precious blood keeps a hundred of us alive, brother. The word about La Golondrina’s healing power spread from pack to pack all across Deathlands. Cannies started pilgrimaging from the farthest corners to find her and be saved from the Gray Death. They’re still coming.”
Ryan turned and gave Mildred a dubious look.
“There had to be a Patient Zero, Ryan,” Mildred said with conviction. “An initial human case. If this woman survived, whether because of the freezing or thawing process, or the duration of her cryosleep, or some other unknown factor, she had to have produced antibodies to the disease. If oozie-infected blood can kill, blood with oozie antibodies can save.”
“Do you have to take the medicine more than once to be protected?” Mildred asked Junior. “Does its effect wear off over time?”
“Don’t know. I’ve only taken it the once. Four months ago. I haven’t gotten any worse.”
“It may not be a complete cure,” Mildred said. “In low concentrations, it could be just a temporary treatment, a palliative that has to be repeated to keep the final stage at bay.”
“How do we find this freezie?” Ryan asked the cannie.
Junior cackled, sensing a sudden turn of fortune. “You don’t,” he said. “Not without me to guide you.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You need me, brother. If what we did to you norms down in the valley was hell, the homeland in Siana is hell on wheels. You’ll never get close to La Golondrina without my help.”
“Let’s talk outside a minute,” Mildred told Ryan.
As they left the cave, Junior’s shrill pleas echoed against their backs. “Feed me! You promised you’d feed me!”
Squinting at the bright morning light, Mildred and Ryan stared across the wide river valley. They could see fires still burning out of control in the no-name ville.
“What happens to me is no longer the issue,” Mildred said gravely. “I don’t matter anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a much bigger problem, Ryan. Until now the oozies kept a lid on the population and spread of cannies. Until now it was one hundred percent fatal. If there’s a treatment that lifts that lid, there’s nothing to stop the disease and cannies from overrunning the continent. Every norm in Deathlands is a potential new