by James Axler
“Sad, but true.”
A winding dirt road snaked along the irregular path of the southern lava flow, and a tremendously thick bridge made of tough volcanic glass offered a way across to the delta.
“Mined?” Jak asked.
“Bet your ass,” J.B. replied. “I can almost smell the hidden explosives.”
Safely reaching land again, the companions paused at a crossroads until a sec man on top of the wall waved them onward.
Proceeding slowly along a gravel road, they marveled at the orderly plots of mixed crops: beans, cabbage, corn, apples and so on. There was also a large patch left barren that had nothing growing there at all.
“Crop rotation?” Mildred asked. “They know about leaving a section fallow to let the soil rest and increase the next year’s crop? Wow, I am impressed.”
“Hey, Millie,” J.B. said, nudging her with an elbow. “Mebbe they do have a steam generator, and all of that other stuff.”
“Or they might enslave any passing travelers who know a thing or two,” Mildred muttered. “You know, for the good of the ville.”
“That would be a bad move on their part,” J.B. growled, loosening the flap on the munitions bag.
The wall was irregular chunks of cooled lava patched together with concrete, or something very similar. In Ryan’s expert opinion, it looked extremely strong. The gate was made of pale applewood, banded together with wide black straps of iron riveted into place.
“Easy to repair if damaged,” Krysty said, shaking her reins. “Somebody here is very smart.”
“So was Kinnison, dear lady,” Doc noted. “Yet he was also crazy enough to try to father his own clone.”
“Kinnison aced,” Jak said contemptuously.
“Indeed, my taciturn friend. But what a terrible price we paid.”
Since it was true, Jak had no possible response to that and merely shrugged.
This close to the ville wall the companions noted several trees that had been neatly pruned of every branch except one. Hanging from that branch was a rotting corpse dangling at the end of a knotted rope, their crime written on a piece of reversed bark nailed to the chest. Rivulets of dried blood clearly showed the process had been accomplished while they were still alive.
“Rape...theft...horse stealing...” Krysty muttered, riding by the reeking corpses. “Sounds good so far.”
“More importantly, there’s nobody hung for disobeying a sec man,” Ryan said, adjusting his eyepatch. “That’s a good sign the baron isn’t a tyrant.”
A hundred feet from the wall the cropland ended, and the companions slowed their horses to a walk. These days, every ville was surrounded by a wide clear belt where an invader would have no place to hide from the longblasters of the sec men on the wall. Doc called it a killing field, but these days such things were as ambiguous as doormats. Noticed, but rarely noted.
“That’s close enough, outlanders!” shouted a bald sec man standing on the wall. He worked the lever on a Winchester .38 longblaster. “What’s your biz here?” The stock of the longblaster was new, and appeared to be carved from bone, but the weapon was spotlessly clean, and shone with fresh oil.
“Just looking to buy some food,” Ryan said, keeping his open hands in plain sight.
“You folks certainly got a lot of blasters, that’s for damn sure,” a sec woman added, cradling an AK-47 rapid-fire with a bayonet attached. “You mercies?”
“Walkers,” Krysty stated. “Just passing through. Not interested in any local trouble.”
In the distance, a volcano softly rumbled in the mountain range, discharging a thick column of black ash and sulfuric steam.
“Well, Old Smokey there seems to like you.” The sec man chuckled, easing his stance. “That’s a good sign.”
“Glad to hear it.” J.B. grinned.
Forcing a smile, the sec woman leaned down slightly. “The baron’s always open for trade...especially if you got any jolt. We’re pretty low in here, and folks are getting itchy.”
“Sorry, never touch the stuff,” Ryan replied, almost insulted at the crude trap. “Last year we ran across a trader who tried to sell us jolt. We burned his stock, cut his hamstrings and left him for the ants. Don’t like jolt, or the bastards who deal in that poison.”
“Now that’s music to my ears, One-Eye.” The sec man rested the longblaster on a shoulder. “My momma always said that the only thing a jolt dealer was good for, was to test the edge of a new knife.”
“Smart woman.”
“Yeah, she was our lib’ary until a stickie got her.” The sec man sighed, his face saddening in memory.
Putting two fingers into her mouth, the sec woman loudly whistled a short tune, and the front gate started to ponderously move aside. “Well, come on inside. Welcome to Little Eden!”
“Good name.”
“Thanks!”
Riding in through the opening gate, the companions nodded to the gang of sec men waiting on the other side. They were clustered around a small gasoline engine that was operating a series of pulleys to move the massive gate.
“Better add some bullet shavings to your juice,” J.B. said in a friendly tone. “You’ve run it on pure shine for too long and the rings are burning out.”
“Told you so!” a short sec man declared, his fists on his hips. “Thanks, outlander!”
“No charge,” J.B. said, riding away.
“You could schmooze the pants off a stone statue,” Mildred said with an obvious note of pride.
The man gave a wink in reply.
Studying the place, Ryan liked what he saw. The ville was full of busy people doing everyday chores: small children running around hauling buckets of water from an artesian well, a butcher chopping up a hog for some waiting customers, a young cooper struggling to get the iron rings to fit on a wooden barrel, and the shirtless crew of a distillery stoking the fire under the copper kettle, every inch of their visible bodies soaked with sweat.
The streets were dirt, packed down with gravel as protection from the spring rains. Every roof was slanted, with a gutter made of PVC pipe to funnel the runoff into plastic barrels on the ground.
“They save the acid rain to make black powder,” Krysty noted. “I’m liking their baron more all of the time.”
The tinkling sound of a badly tuned piano came from a large cinder-block building in the center of the ville, along with a chorus of drunken singing.
Heading in that direction, Ryan and the others tethered their horses at a rusty parking meter in front of the tavern. Hanging from the rafters, a hand-carved wooden sign proudly proclaimed this was the Broken Fish, Bare Girls.
“That’s supposed to read ‘bar and grille,’” Mildred corrected, under her breath.
Just then, a louvered door on a second-floor balcony swung open and a topless woman appeared to loudly belch, then stagger drunkenly back inside.
“I stand corrected.” Mildred sighed, shaking her head at the new reality.
Draping their excess furs over the saddlebags to hide them from view, the companions tromped onto the wooden porch. An old sec man in a rocking chair waved at them in greeting. A double-barreled longblaster lay across his lap, the homemade weapon made from galvanized steel pipes bound together with coils of iron wire.
Nodding in return, Ryan reached into a pocket for a live bullet to pay for the fellow to guard the horses.
But the sec man waved that away. “Courtesy of the baron,” he said, displaying a complete lack of teeth. “Nobody steals a horse in Little Eden!”
“Fair enough,” Ryan said, turning to go inside. He stopped. “Anything wrong with bringing you a beer on our way out?”
“Hell no!” The sec man cackled. “Bring two if you feel like it!”
Shooting the man with a finger, Ryan joined the other
companions inside the Broken Fish. The tavern was huge, holding a dozen wooden tables made from cable spools flipped over onto their sides. The air was thick with the smells of roasting meat, frying onions, sweaty bodies, shine, spent black powder, badly cured furs, tobacco, marijuana, gun oil, fresh bread and popcorn.
At the tables, several sec men and sec women were playing dominoes, a family of travelers was bent over a table eating stew, and a gaudy slut was asleep on a table, a hand-rolled cigar dangling from her slack lips. Under the table, a fat dog was chewing on a meaty bone.
“Nice,” Jak said with a wide grin. “Like.”
The piano and player were both safe behind a wall of sandbags, probably to protect the valuable instrument from any flying lead during a bar fight. Drunken singers were clustered along the sandbags, drinking from a wide variety of cups and ceramic mugs, some of which displayed corporate logos of ancient companies.
Stairs led to the second floor, and from behind those closed doors came rather unmistakable sounds of professional intimacy: sweaty slaps, hard grunts, giggling and groans.
In the far corner, a girl sat near a roaring fireplace shaking an antique bed warmer over the crackling flames. A steady popping noise was easily discernable over the drunken singing coming from the opposite corner. As the popping died away, she emptied the bed warmer into a wooden bowl, added what looked to be butter and salt, and passed it away to immediately start the next batch. The bowl traveled across the room, going from table to table, until finally reaching the bar.
“Empty!” called out the fat bartender. “Make more this time, Lucille!”
“On the way, Dotty!” the girl answered, pouring the new batch into a shiny, clean hubcap this time.
Since the tables were all full, the companions took seats at the corner of the bar. That way, their backs were covered by a wall, and they could see their horses outside.
“Hi, I’m Dorothy. New in the ville? What’ll ya have?” the bartender asked, as if saying that a hundred times a day.
She was a mature women with a lot of curly black hair. Her patched dress hung loose except for an apron tied tight around her waist, and her huge breasts moved freely under the thin blouse.
“The stew smells good,” Ryan said, taking a stool.
“’Tis!” Dorothy said, wiping down the counter with a damp rag. “Fresh this week. Bear and venison with taters and carrots.”
“Bear and venison?” J.B. asked curiously.
“Bear’s got a strong taste, so we sweeten it with a little venison,” she said, looking up at last. Dorothy recoiled a little at the sight of all the weapons, then rallied a smile. “Tastes good! Guaranteed.”
“Okay, seven bowls,” Ryan said. “Got any coffee?”
“We do. But that’s expensive, outlander,” Dorothy replied, resting a plump fist on a hip. “However, we got lots of fresh shine, old beer and dew.”
“Dew?”
“Shine cut with blackberry juice.”
“Sounds great,” Ryan said diplomatically. “But we’ll stick with the coffee.”
Placing a hand on the counter, he turned it over to show three .22 bullets.
“Shitfire and honeycakes,” Dorothy whispered, reaching out a hand to almost touch the shiny shells. “Those live?”
“Open them if you like,” Ryan said, pushing the ammunition closer. “They’re not filled with dirt.”
“No, I reckon they’re not,” she muttered, scooping up the bullets and tucking them into a pocket of her apron. “Nine times out of ten I can tell an owl from a stickie.”
“Yeah, but it’s that tenth time that’ll chill you,” Ryan said, touching his eyepatch.
“True enough!” Dorothy laughed, jerking a thumb at the wall. “Welcome to the Broken Fish. Don’t ask about the origin of the name. I’ve forgotten the truth and run out of lies. I’m Big Dot, owner and enforcer.”
“Both?” Krysty asked curiously.
Without comment, Dorothy jerked her hand forward. Something small and fast shot across the room in a blur, and a wooden ball slammed into the bull’s-eye on the bedraggled dartboard ten yards away.
All conversation in the tavern stopped, and hands darted into clothing, closely followed by metallic clicking of safeties being thumbed off.
“Just a demo for the newbie!” Dorothy announced through cupped hands. “Go back to your drinking!”
Slowly, everything returned to normal. Only now Ryan noted that nobody seemed to be paying any attention to the companions anymore. It would seem Dot ruled the tavern like a baron.
“Why a wooden ball?” Ricky asked, placing both elbows on the counter.
“Aced customers generally don’t come back the next day,” J.B. explained.
“Or pay their bills!” Dorothy replied with a jiggling chuckle. “So...coffee, you said. Leaded or unleaded?”
“What’s difference?” Jak asked suspiciously.
“Leaded is the real stuff. Unleaded is the homie stuff we make out back from burned bread crumbs and chicory.” She shrugged, making her blouse move in a quite spectacular manner. “It tastes real enough, but it won’t get your heart humming.”
“Less fun than kissing your sister?”
“Not my sister, but close enough.”
“Leaded,” Krysty decided. “Plus, lots of bread.”
“Done and done. We also have some honey and apple butter. But that’s extra, of course.”
“Bring, if real,” Jak said, pulling the hubcap of popcorn closer.
“Real as these!” Dorothy laughed, using both hands to jiggle her huge breasts.
“Then real as nature itself,” Doc said in a smooth manner, a hand to his heart in thespian style. “For what glory of God could ever compare with the dulcet beauty of a woman armed with a deadly smile.”
“Shitfire, I do like sweet talk,” Dorothy said, studying the man.
Doc smiled politely, and she reached out to grab his arm and squeeze. “You’re no wrinklie,” she said, a new tone of respect entering her words. “You look about ready for the last train, but feel like a sec man.”
“Why, thank you, madam,” Doc mumbled, blushing fiercely.
“And shy, too?” Dorothy leaned in closer, her breath warm on his cheek. “I got a room in the back. Show you a hell of a good time. No charge, honey.”
As understanding flared, Doc turned an even darker shade of red. “How nice, but I...that is...”
“Come on, you like fems, right?”
“Yes, I do. But...that is...” Desperately, Doc looked around for help.
“He’s mine,” Mildred growled, sliding an arm around the man and pulling him close.
“I don’t mind sharing,” Dorothy said, looking over the shorter woman.
“Well, I do,” Mildred replied, resting a hand on the ZKR holstered on her belt. “Nobody rides my horse, but me. Understand?”
“Fair enough.” Dorothy sighed, turning away. “I’ll go get the food.”
As she disappeared into the steamy kitchen, Mildred released Doc and he covered his face with both hands. “Dear lady, I...thank you,” he said. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you ten thousand times.”
“No problem,” Mildred stated, trying not to smile. “Just stop flirting with every woman you meet, okay?”
“Flirt? I was merely being polite.”
“These days that’s damn near a proposal of marriage.”
“I see your point.”
Slamming open the door, a group of armed sec men entered the bar. In the center was a short man with a pointy beard. He walked with a pronounced limp and was using an intricately carved wooden cane. Unlike the sec men, he was wearing predark clothing, all of it clean and neatly pressed. There was a brace of H&K handblasters in his gunbelt, the leather loops full of live ammun
ition.
“Baron?” Ricky asked out of the corner of his mouth.
“Baron,” Krysty agreed.
Walking straight to the companions, the man offered a hand. “I hear you folks are here to trade,” he said without any preamble.
“We are...if you’re the baron,” Ryan said, accepting the hand and shaking.
As the sec men fanned out in defensive positions, the man blinked, then broke into laughter. “Good one, Blackie!” he cackled. “I’m Baron Calvin Rushmore.”
“Ryan.” He wasn’t bothered about the sec men. A baron without them was soon wearing grass for an overcoat.
“What’s your biz?” Rushmore asked, turning around an empty chair and sitting.
“Just walkers needing supplies,” Ryan said. “Dried meat, horse feed and such. We got brass.”
“If you don’t mind smoked bear and cornmeal, we got enough to feed an army,” Rushmore said, crossing his legs. Pulling out a cigar, he struck a match on his pants and got the tobacco glowing.
Feeling his throat tighten at the wonderful smell, J.B. tried not to openly drool.
“Now, what kind of brass do you have? I have no need of .22 rounds that wouldn’t stop a dormouse.”
Expecting that, Ryan flipped over a bullet.
Making the catch, Rushmore closely inspected the military-grade 5.56 mm cartridge, his smile steadily growing.
“How much do you want, friend?” he asked, blowing a smoke ring.
Just then, a small boy dashed breathlessly into the tavern. Looking around, he raced through the maze of tables to the baron and offered him a tiny slip of neatly folded paper.
With his smile sagging, Rushmore took the slip and looked inside. “Bad timing, Blackie,” he said, stuffing the paper into a shirt pocket. “It seems like we just ran out of bear...venison, cornmeal, onions and damn near everything else.”
“Near?”
“Okay, everything else,” Rushmore growled. “We have nothing to sell to you in this ville.”
“Here’s your stew!” Dorothy announced, coming out of the kitchen.
“Nor does anybody else in the ville have anything to sell, barter or trade to you outlanders,” the baron said in a loud voice.
