by James Axler
“It seems that the young lady at the bar thinks you are a mutie of some kind, Jak,” Doc said to the unconcerned teen.
“Good,” Jak replied. “I like riding, but prefer wild filly, not ville swayback.”
“Well said, my young friend! So faithful in love, so gallant in war, I daresay there was not a knight like the young Lochinvar!”
Some of the locals looked up at the shout, then decided it was not the start of a fight and went back to their drinking.
Easing the grip on their blasters, a group of sec men over by an open window continued to play cards, live brass piled on the table instead of chips or jack. A wrinklie was softly snoring on top of a table, a mug of shine still tight in his hand, and a scrawny kid was sitting alone at a table, industriously eating soup with a wooden spoon, her bare feet dangling inches off the floor. A dog lay nearby watching intently and eagerly wagging his tail.
“The locals seem a little jumpy,” Krysty said softly, her hair moving forward to hide her words. “Almost as if they’re expecting trouble from us. But they must know that we’re with Roberto.”
“Yeah, I know,” Ryan said, giving the woman a squeeze to bring her closer. “Let me know if you feel anything coming our way. A half-second warning can make all the difference.”
She nodded in response.
The walls were heavily decorated with faded posters of Mexico, Australia and the Bahamas, obviously looted from a travel agency. Mildred noted that there were no posters of Switzerland or Colorado, but that only made sense. For folks living in the middle of a cloudy mountain range, the sunny beach was probably their dream of heaven.
The windows were a mix of clear glass and oiled paper where an irreplaceable pane had been broken. The work was expertly done. However, the floor of the tavern was a patchwork of wooden boards and irregular pieces of linoleum. Shoddy workmanship at best.
Had to have been different owners of the tavern over the years, Ryan thought. Some cared about the place, while others did not. That made the man uneasy, although he could not tell why, and he decided to stay on his guard. There was something wrong about this ville, in spite of what Roberto said, something terribly wrong. Ryan could feel it in his bones.
Finding a table in the corner where they could watch the front door, the companions took chairs, then placed their blasters in plain sight. A couple of people who had seemed pleased at their appearance turned away from the companions and concentrated very hard on doing something else. The sec men paid more attention to the blasters than the companions, as if registering type, style and condition, then they went back to playing cards and ignored both.
“That worked well,” Mildred said under her breath, settling the med kit on her lap.
“Always does,” J.B. agreed thankfully.
A bucktoothed waitress came over for their order and left looking bored and disinterested.
“Bony,” Jak noted in displeasure. “Not good sign about food.”
“Too true, my young friend,” Doc agreed. “One should always be wary of a skinny cook, a drunk banker, a sweaty cop and a happy mortician.”
“Cop?”
“An old term for sec man.”
“Ah. Gotcha.”
In short order, the food was served, fish stew in wood bowls, sliced black bread and a tin pot of stewed apples. Nothing was said for a while as the companions dug in and concentrated on just eating. The stew was watery, the apples bland, but the bread smelled like heaven and tasted even better, although there was a strange aftertaste.
“Don’t eat any more of that,” Mildred said, pushing away the plate of sliced bread. “There’s some sort of contaminant. Mold, lead, I don’t know what. The cook probably just had dirty hands, but the last thing you want is a case of cholera.”
“Damn,” Jak muttered, putting back a slice. He had eaten the first few rounds so fast he wouldn’t have noticed if the bread possessed tentacles. “Stew okay?”
“Fine.” She smiled. “If there’s anything bad in there, I can’t taste it.”
“While I can barely taste it at all, madam,” Doc added, pouring a spoonful of the thin stuff back into his bowl. “I do believe that I have told lies thinner than this ethereal broth.”
Reaching into a pocket, Krysty started to offer the scholar a packet of salt from an old MRE envelope, when she noticed that Ryan was not eating, but oddly inspecting his spoon.
“Something wrong, lover?” she asked, resisting the urge to look around the room. If he was planning something, that might tip his hand.
“Don’t know yet,” Ryan replied, watching a drunk stumble across the tavern, bumping into people and mumbling apologies. The drunk was young, with tousled hair as if just awoken. However, the teenager didn’t seem disoriented enough to be really drunk, and the one-eyed man mentally classified him as a thief, colliding with the patrons to snatch what he could from their pockets. It was a dangerous ploy in a room full of armed people. Unless he was only pretending to be a thief, the same way he wasn’t really drunk.
His combat instincts on the alert, Ryan moved his chair away from the table. As the hiccupping youth staggered their way, Ryan turned and thrust out a stiff arm to shove the fellow away. But as he did, there was a brief sensation of warmth across his chest and suddenly his shirt was darkening with blood.
“Razor!” Jak snarled, jerking an arm toward the stranger.
Thwarted of an easy chill, Billy moved lightning fast out of the way of the thrown blade and it thudded into the counter, quivering from the force with which it was thrown.
Sweeping his arms across the table, Ryan sent his bowl of stew into the face of the teenager and Krysty kicked an empty chair off the floor. It hit the youth and down he went, only to roll back up, a knife in one hand, a remade blaster in the other, the barrel lumpy and patched with gray tape.
The companions dived aside as the weapon barked, the window shattered and somebody screamed from outside.
Everybody in the tavern was moving now, pulling blasters, throwing axes and clubs, but unsure of exactly what was happening. Taking advantage of the confusion, Billy stood behind the card players and fired again at the companions. A wooden mug of shine exploded in front of Jak, blinding him with foam and splinters. Doc pulled him low, and Mildred returned fire, catching Billy in the shoulder, spinning him, blood spraying everywhere.
Trembling all over, Krysty dropped her blaster from splayed fingers and began to scream in mindless agony as a small clump of her hair snipped off by the round gently floated away on the breeze from the window.
Raising a chair as a shield, Ryan charged, and Billy dived over the counter to belly shoot the bartender and burst out a side door onto the street.
His combat boots thumping on the floorboards, Ryan was close at hand, even though he knew it was a trap. Turning upward, he saw the second coldheart on the balcony taking aim with a rapidfire. Ryan fired just as a knife flashed past his face, scoring a bloody furrow along his cheek, then the balcony exploded into blood and dust as the .50-caliber machine gun on the UCV cut loose with a hellstorm of hot lead, the heavy-caliber rounds tearing the coldheart apart and sending him flying through the glass doors behind.
Ignoring the dead man, Ryan took off after the teenager, with Doc and Jak close behind. However, Billy kept moving through the confused crowd, making it impossible for them to get a clear shot. He fired twice back at them, but the first round hit nothing and the second hammered a water barrel. Dozens of townsfolk had blasters out, some running away, some looking confused, others grinning, ready for a chill.
Suddenly finding himself facing a wall of grim sec men, Billy shot a young woman in the face and grabbed the infant from her arms before it hit the ground.
“Back off, or I ace the kid!” he screamed, spittle flying from his mouth. Clearly the teenager was terrified. The plan had gone wrong with lightning speed, and without Delacort for guidance, he had no idea what to do next. Except grab a hostage, get outside the wall, then run. Somewhere in the w
oods he’d find Pete. Then he would be safe. Yes, that was it, find Pete and everything would be okay!
Without pausing in his stride, Ryan leveled the SIG-Sauer and fired once.
A neat black hole appeared between Billy’s eyes, and the back of his head jerked as it erupted, the spray smacking wetly on the wall of the blacksmith’s shack. Already aced, the teenager worked his mouth as if trying to speak, the last impulses of his pulped brain still commanding his body, then his arms relaxed and he folded to the ground. Howling loudly, the infant rolled onto the hard bricks and started making even more noise than before.
Several women rushed from the mob to gather up the infant and carry him away from the bloody carnage.
“Nuke me!” a sec man exclaimed, lowering his scattergun. “That was a hell of a shot, One-Eye!”
“I wanted him alive,” Ryan said, holstering the blaster. “Kid okay?”
“Looks like. Kin of yours?”
“Nope.”
“You spent brass on a stranger?”
Just then a large man appeared out of the crowd, closely flanked by several armed sec men. His clothes were clean, and he carried a predark machine pistol, the deadly weapon gleaming with oil. Nobody had to say that this was the ruler of the ville; the man wore his rank like a mantle of authority.
“All right, what the frag is going on here!” Baron Kirkland Conway demanded, a hand resting on the holstered 9 mm Ingram rapidfire. “Davis, did you see what happened?”
“Yes, sir, baron,” the sec man said respectfully, giving a crisp salute. “This coldheart came out of the tavern with One-Eye over there chasing after him like a starving mutie. Some guy on the balcony was waiting for them and popped a shot at One-Eye, then that war wag opened up with a Fifty and put the sniper on the last train west. The running guy fired a couple of times, hitting nothing, and before we could grab him, the nuke-sucker shot Rhonda and grabbed her babe. Next thing I know, the coldheart is looking at forever and One-Eye is holstering his piece.”
“That fast?” Conway asked, raising an eyebrow. “He shot while running?”
“Yes, sir. Never seen anything like it!”
“Me, neither,” the baron admitted. “What started the fight in the tavern? Somebody cheating at cards? Grab the wrong ass?”
“Hell, no!” one of the tavern’s sluts declared, fists resting on plump hips. “This pinhead charged down from Linda’s room, poured a beer over his head, then started staggering around like he was wild drunk.”
“He was pulling a filch?”
“Yes, sir. The outlanders called him on it, blasters started banging, and the aced guy ran behind the bar, chilled Hobart, and ran outside.”
“Hobart got aced?” the baron demanded, his voice taking on a new tone.
The slut nodded. “Deader than DeeCee.”
An angry murmur rose from the attending crowd and somebody spit on the cooling corpse.
“Anybody else hurt or aced?” the baron demanded.
“Linda,” the slut said, her tone softening. “Somebody…somebody beat her with a blaster. She’s…she’s…”
“That’s okay,” the baron said with surprising gentleness. “I understand, Yurizane.” Looking at the second story of the tavern, he saw that there was blood dripping off the ruined balcony. “Probably the coldheart that popped a cap at One-Eye,” the baron guessed, hitching up his gunbelt. “Well, the Fifty took care of him, so that debt is paid. Is the baby hurt?”
“Just bruised a little,” a wrinklie said, proffering the infant for inspection.
The baron waved her off. “I’m no healer,” he said. “You say it—she?”
“He, my lord.”
“If you say he’s okay, then I take your word.” Looking down at the chilled mother, Conway sighed. “Well, I know that Rhonda has no family, so…anybody want the kid?”
“I’ll take him,” the blacksmith said, advancing from the shadowy interior of the shop. “My wife passed away last month, and I got no other kin.”
“Now you do,” the baron stated. “This is your new son…” He waited.
“Daniel, Baron. Daniel Stewart.”
“Raise him right, or I’ll hear about it. Savvy?”
“Yes, my lord!” Stewart said happily, taking the squalling infant in his colossal arms. “Thank you!”
“Fine, fine, you’re welcome,” the baron said, turning his attention to Ryan and the others. “Okay, my sec men say it was a fair fight, so his boots and blasters are yours. But not the brass. That goes to the ville.”
“Give them to the blacksmith,” Ryan said. “The boy will want a blaster when he gets old enough.”
“You turning down the spoils?” a sec man gasped.
“Don’t need them,” Ryan said with a shrug. “Got better.”
“You heard him,” the baron said, and a sec man gathered the bloody items and took them into the livery.
“Now as for you outlanders,” Conway continued. “You can go about your business. But I want you gone at dawn. Savvy?”
“No problem,” Ryan said, finding himself starting to like the man. He ran a tight ville and wasted no time on posturing for the crowd. “However, our dinner is ruined, and I don’t think we’ll be welcomed back.”
“You got that right.” Conway laughed. “Innocent or not, Howard is gonna want you to pay for all of the damages, and if things get red, I’ll be backing Howard. Savvy?”
“Savvy.”
“How many folks you got?”
Ryan fought the urge to lie. There was little point with those huge windows in the UCV. “Six.”
The baron said nothing for a moment, looking over the crowd waiting to hear his decision. “Corporal O’Malley! Give these folks six rations of traveling bread.”
A skinny sec man frowned but nodded in agreement and took off at a run. He returned shortly and tossed a burlap bag to Ryan.
“Gone at dawn,” Baron Conway repeated, turning away and heading toward the greenhouse.
Down the street, Krysty stumbled out of the tavern, supported by Mildred. The redhead was pale, the front of her shirt stained with vomit. As he started to head for them, Ryan was stopped by the slut.
“I want to thank you for taking out the bastards that aced my friend,” Yurizane said, throwing herself into his arms and kissing him passionately all over the face.
More than slightly annoyed, Ryan tried to force her away when the busty woman breathed warmly into his ear. “Don’t eat the bread.”
That stopped him cold, and Ryan kissed her back, then grabbed her plump ass, putting on a good show for anybody watching. “Why not?” he whispered into her scented hair. It smelled like fresh roses, stale cigarettes and old shine.
“Drugged. Gonna do nightcreep,” Yurizane murmured, then pulled back to grab him between the legs. “My, my, that’s a nice big caliber, but I think I got the well-oiled breechloader to handle it!”
The crowd of townsfolk and sec men burst into laughter, then started to wander away. The fight was over, and there was work to be done. Life continued. Its mouth still open in shock, Billy’s corpse lay in the gutter. In a few hours the night gang would haul it off to the garbage dump.
Releasing Ryan, the slut batted her eyelids at Doc and Jak, then sashayed away, rolling her hips in the well-trained manner of a professional.
“If I did not know you better, my dear Ryan, I would think that lewd performance was real,” Doc muttered. “However, I do know you, so what was that actually about?”
“A warning,” Ryan replied, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ll tell you later. But first, let’s get inside the wag.”
Quickly joining Mildred and Krysty, the one-eyed man took the redhead in his arms and carried her to the urban combat vehicle. Ryan gently placed her on a bedroll while Doc and Jak locked the armored doors.
“Will she be all right?” the big man asked, his voice thick with emotion.
“Yes, she’s just in shock,” Mildred said, wiping the sweat off
the woman’s brow. “Krysty losing hair is like us having fingers removed. But she’ll be okay in a few hours or so.”
“If she needs anything…” Ryan began.
“Just sleep,” Mildred said gently, covering the woman with a second bedroll. “That’s all, just some sleep.” Then she added, “And let me know when I should clean that cut across your chest.”
Ryan looked down at the wound as if seeing it for the first time. If he hadn’t been moving, that knife would have opened his belly like a self-heat. “Never felt a thing,” he muttered, gingerly touching the bloody scratch.
“Stiletto,” Jak said, pulling the blade into view. “Razor-sharp, good as scalpel. Was planning return to owner, but you aced first.”
“Sorry,” Ryan said, a weak smiling playing on his lips.
Tucking away the slim dagger, the teenager shrugged. “S’okay.”
Watching the unconscious Krysty for a few minutes, Ryan forced himself away and called the other companions closer to tell them about Yurizane.
“She could be lying,” J.B. said, tilting back his fedora to scratch his head. “But I’ll be damned if I can figure out why.”
Opening the bag, Jak took a hard sniff. “Seems okay,” he said. “But then, if smell bad, no eat.”
“True, and if it is a soporific, taking a bite will do nothing immediately,” Mildred added. “If the first person to eat a loaf fell over, nobody else would have any. The drug must be designed to put us into a deep, natural sleep tonight so that the sec men can come slit our throats, one by one, without waking the others.”
“Ghastly, effective and diabolical!” Doc declared angrily. “Is there any way you can check this theory, madam? Run some sort of chemical analysis of the bread?”
“With what?” Mildred demanded curtly, waving a hand at the interior of the wag. “We’re lucky to have blankets! I seem to be fresh out of thermal distillation units, spectrometers and gas chromatographs!”
“Ah, fair enough, dear lady,” the scholar demurred. “But surely there is something we can do?”
“Yes, there is.” Ryan went to the front of the war wag and grabbed the mike. “One-Eye to Scorpion,” he said loudly. “One-Eye to Scorpion! We have a priority message for Scorpion!”
