by James Axler
“Looks like they’re expecting trouble,” J.B. said, finally releasing his hold on the pistol-grip safety of the Uzi. “Then again, good sec men are always ready for a shit storm.”
“Comes with the job,” Ryan agreed, watching the group of armed men stroll away until they were out of sight. Casting a glance at the ville wall, the one-eyed man saw the guards slowly walking along the top of the rusty trailers, crossbows in their hands. The guards were smoking and talking to one another, and their faces were turned toward the desolate farmland surrounding the ville and the endless shifting sands of the New Mex desert. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
“Apparently the rank and file are not aware that something is wrong inside the ville,” Doc espoused thoughtfully. “That would seem to make it a purely executive concern.”
“That’s bad for the ville, but good for us,” Krysty said, glancing at Mildred. “You okay?”
Looking at the ground, Mildred shrugged, unable to express the mixture of emotions that filled her mind.
“Come on,” Ryan directed, heading for the stable. “Mad dogs and Englishman, you know.”
Doc shot the man a startled look.
“Heard it from you.”
“Ah!”
Stepping out of the sun, the companions stood for a moment in the cool shadows to breathe in the richly scented air. It was filled with the pungent smells of horses, sweat, soap, leather and manure. Low dividers of adobe bricks had sectioned the warehouse into individual stalls, and the rear of the stable was stacked high with bales of green hay and a loose mound of dry yellow straw. A crude wall of bright orange highway crash barrels separated the edible hay from the straw, a lot of which was spread across the floor. Sunk into the concrete floor, steel girders supported a corrugated aluminum ceiling high enough to give proper ventilation, and the predark fluorescent light had been replaced with clusters of alcohol lanterns hanging by rusty chains. None of the lanterns was on, the bright sunshine coming through the front doors more than enough to illuminate the interior.
Surveying the place, Ryan saw only horses in the stalls, and a ratty-looking camel. But no wags of any kind. Strange.
“Yeah?” a burly man shouted in crude greeting, a dirty wooden pitchfork in his wide hands. The fellow was in loose pants that seemed to be composed entirely of patches, and a sweat-stained T-shirt that clung to his muscular chest as if painted onto the skin. “And just who the frag are you?”
Then he blinked and gave a smile. “Oh, it’s the rists! Welcome! Been waiting for you! Come on, your animals are over here!”
As the beefy stable hand walked away in a rolling gait more seemingly for a sailor, Doc nudged J.B. with an elbow.
“We seem to have been expected,” Doc mumbled with ill-hidden meaning.
“Not take doomie to figure that,” Jak said, brushing back his snow-white hair. “Not much more important than horse.”
“Here they are,” the stable hand announced, casually waving the pitchfork. “Baron Harmond said only the best, so I took care of them myself.”
Going to their horses, the companions checked over the animals and were pleased to see that the man appeared to be telling the truth. The horses were in fine shape, watered, fed and curried clean. Even the saddles had been rubbed down with fresh oil. Ryan didn’t know if that was a courtesy for helping the doomie, or his subtle way of suggesting they might need to leave soon. But either way, the companions were pleased with the attention the horses were receiving.
“The palomino had a stone bruise,” the stable hand said. “But I took care of that.”
Hanging his leather jacket on a wooden peg sticking out of the adobe wall, Jak went to his mare and ever-so-gently got the horse to lift her rear hoof. There was some minor discoloration there, but nothing serious.
“How fix?” Jak asked, easing the hoof down again.
The stable hand snorted in amusement at that, and the teen nodded in understanding. Check. Trade secret. Just like J.B. with blasters, and his own knowledge of making shine. Some things you talk to folks about, but other stuff you carry to the grave. When most people knew jackshit, even one little bit of smart could keep grub on the table for a lifetime.
“They’re all in excellent shape,” Krysty commented, scratching her roan mare behind the ear. The horses preened under the touch, nickering softly.
With the saddle and blanket removed, she could now see all of the scars on the hide of the poor animal. This had been a sec man’s war horse, the survivor of a hundred battles, a veteran who had been ready to be slaughtered for the dinner table before she’d taken ownership.
The stable hand waved that away. “Just doing my job.”
“Well, thank you anyway…” Krysty left the sentence hanging.
“Armand.” The man smiled, leaning on the pitchfork. “Don’t bother to tell me your names, I know them already. Hot rain, everybody in the ville did long before you arrived.”
“About that,” Ryan said, walking over, his combat boots crunching where the straw was dry, and squishing in other locations.
“Yeah?” Armand asked curiously, his tone pleasant. “If you’re gonna ask what else he said about you, save your wind. Ever talk with a doomie before?”
“Some,” Ryan admitted honestly. Aced a few, too.
“Well, then, you know, they don’t talk from the hip,” the stable hand explained with a snort. A horse copied as if in agreement. Armand chuckled, then continued. “You gotta listen to what they don’t say, just as much as what they blabber about.”
“Just like figuring out what’s wrong with a horse,” Mildred added, meandering her way through the steaming piles as she walked closer.
Caught totally by surprise, Armand shot up both eyebrows. Well, nuke me running, she understood!
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “There was this time when the baron was little, when he told about his father’s death and warned of the fringed traitor. We had no idea what the hell that meant. But a couple hours later, the sec chief rode back alone, saying a mutie got the baron. Chief Bateman, he was just a corporal then, spots the fringe on the saddle bag of the chief’s horse and shoots it with his blaster.”
Armand shook his head. “The blast damn near blew down the ville gate even though it was fifty yards away. The bag was full of predark explos. Took us a week of hard digging to fill the fragging hole, I can tell you. Any closer and the wall would have been down for good. Well, the sec men declared Junior the baron that very night, and the first thing Harmond did was make Bateman the new chief.”
“Junior?” Doc asked.
The stablehand gave a rueful grin. “That’s his name, Junior Harmond. Odd name, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely,” J.B. agreed. “But then, barons are strange, doomies even more so.”
“Fucking aces.” Armand laughed. “About two winters ago, the baron awoke at dawn and ordered everybody onto the roof with any weapons they had—blasters, crossbows, knives, rocks bottles, axes, anything! Then he threw open the ville gates and we all just waited, sitting there, freezing in the cold. Some of us naked as a piglet. Couple hours later, a small army of coldhearts arrived, dragging along a predark cannon they called a howitzer. The ville wall is strong, nuke yes, but that mil wep would have punched holes in it like pissing in snow.”
A wind blew hot air into the cool stable through the open doors just as Armand continued. “The coldhearts seemed puzzled finding the gate open, but they strolled inside anyway and started wandering around, getting more and more scared that mebbe this was a plague ville with everybody aced, and just as they started to panic, the baron stands up in plain sight and orders the attack.”
“Must have shit pants,” Jak said in amusement.
“Yes, sir, we caught them totally by surprise. Chilled them all, down to the last son of a bitch,” Armand said proudly, patting the leather sheath on his hip. “He saved this ville, sure as Mohawk is a mantrap. The sec men got the ho
witzer, and I got a new knife.”
Mohawk? Oh, yes, the western mountain range.
“Any trouble since then?” Ryan asked, probing for additional information.
It wasn’t gossip they wanted, but some sort of idea what to expect from the baron. Was he really on their side against this common enemy, or was he planning to use the companions as bait in a trap to save the ville, and to hell with the outlanders? This is what the Trader used to call “chewing” a ville. Just keep smiling and asking for stories and a smart person could discover all sorts of important things.
Appreciative of the willing audience, Armand gave a hard smile. The others in the ville knew all of the old stories. But he enjoyed telling them again and again to the rists and pilgrims who wandered in from the Zone.
“Trouble? Yeah, sure, some,” he admitted, stabbing the pitchfork into a pile of straw. “But we get them more times than they do us, that’s for fragging sure.” Leaning against an adobe wall, the stable hand pulled out a piece of jerky and tore off a chunk to start chewing. He would have preferred to smoke some maryjane in his corncob pipe, but the horses hated smoke more than the colic. Couldn’t blame them, either, not really. Not much worse than a fire in the stable.
“And what did Baron Harmond say about us?” Ryan finally asked, getting to the point.
Biting off another chew, Armand shifted uneasily under the man’s gaze. “Well…he said to give you anything you want, and stay the fuck out of the way.”
“Any reason?” Mildred asked suspiciously.
“All those folks coming after you. Coldhearts with all sorts of predark drek. Lots of people are gonna die.”
“Then why let us in?” J.B. demanded, tilting back his fedora.
He shrugged. “Even more get aced if we don’t,” Armand answered in blunt honesty.
“More? Who among us will get aced?” Krysty asked, her hair flexing anxiously.
“Dunno that.” Armand tilted his head toward the ville. “We lost our healer last week.”
“Was your healer like me?” Ryan asked, touching his scarred face.
The stablehand studied him before replying. “Yeah, only had the one eye. But no accident like yours. I can see the scar. Jerry was just born that way. Not a mutie, mind you!” he hastily added, raising both hands. “The other just wasn’t there. Only an empty socket.”
“Black Cough,” Mildred said, frowning. “His mother must have had the Black Cough when she was in term. A lot of the women who survive the disease gave birth to children with facial deformities.”
“The cough, eh?” Armand said, mulling it over. “Yeah, I think you’re right about that.” Then his face brightened. “Oh, yeah, and one more thing. We’re supposed to tell you the stew is fresh at the Broke Neck tavern.”
“Is it? Ryan asked suspiciously.
The stable hand shrugged again. “I eat with the sec men. That place is for villagers. I have no idea.”
“Interesting,” Doc uttered, worrying the swordstick in his hands. There was a snap, and the silver lion’s head came away from the shaft, exposing a couple inches of the steel sword hidden inside. Then the scholar shoved them back together with a solid click. “And when did the illustrious baron order you to tell us this?”
“About a month ago, I guess. Mebbe five weeks.”
Just when we arrived at Blaster Base One in southern part of New Mex, Ryan realized. Could be a coincidence, but he didn’t think so. Wheels within wheels, as Mildred liked to say. Bateman had guided them here so that Armand could tell them to go to the tavern. Ryan felt a rush of blind rage start to well from within, and he forced the chilling fury under control. Fireblasting hell, were they being played for feebs by the teenage doomie? Or was this Harmond’s way of helping them? Only one way to find out.
“Arnie?” somebody shouted.
With hands on blasters, the companions turned just as a young woman walked into the doorway of the stable. Dressed in a tattered white dress with her blond hair cascading to trim hips, the busty teen paused in the opening and hesitantly smiled. With the bright sun streaming from behind, the thin fabric of her white dress was rendered translucent, nearly transparent, and it was shockingly obvious that the girl was wearing only skin underneath.
“Hey, Danni,” Armand said, hurriedly tucking the piece of jerky away into a pocket and smoothing back his hair. “Just let me take care of these people, and I’ll give you that riding lesson I promised.”
“A riding lesson?” Danni replied, puzzled. Then she caught on. “Of course, Arnie. No prob, I’ll wait over here till you’re done.”
“Thanks,” the stable hand said with a forced smile, then turned to look at the companions with a pitiful expression. “Anything else I can help you with?”
“No, thanks. We’ll be going now,” Ryan said, fighting back a bemused grin. From the way the two of them were acting, he’d assume that she was the only child of either Chief Bateman, or some villager with a nuke-hot temper and a working blaster.
As the companions left the stable, the young woman rushed in and Armand closed the plywood doors. As the locking bar was noisily dropped into place, there instantly came a feminine squeal of delight and then profound silence.
“Lucky Armand,” Jak said, casting a glance back at the warehouse. It had been a long time since the Cajun had knocked boots, and that view of the teenage girl standing in the bright stable doorway had been mighty close to heaven in his opinion.
“Not my type,” J.B. replied nonchalantly, removing his glasses to start rubbing them with a soft cloth taken from an inside pocket. “Too young, too blond and I’ll bet she doesn’t know anything about cutting up the innards of people and sewing them back together.”
Frowning slightly at that comment, Mildred glanced at the short man who was industriously cleaning his glasses. She walked over to bump him with a hip.
Donning his specs, J.B. smiled in reply, and the two of them walked side by side, sharing a private moment on the hot and dusty street. When you were with the right person, some things didn’t need to be said out loud.
“What now, lover?” Krysty asked, checking the load in her revolver.
“It’s time we did a recce on that tavern,” Ryan answered, his stomach rumbling. “And get some bastard chow, too.”
“Sounds good,” Jak added, slipping off his camou jacket to tie the arms around his waist. The day was brutally hot, and the jacket weighed a lot with all of the knives hidden up the sleeves and the bits of razor and glass sewn into it.
“And afterward?” Krysty prompted, tucking away her weapon.
“Then we go see the baron,” Ryan intoned dangerously. “The doomie knows a lot more than he’s telling, and I’m starting to feel like a pawn in that game Doc once tried to teach me.”
“Ah, chess!” Doc quipped in exclamation. “I concur, my dear Ryan. The baron may even know who is behind all of the mysterious events that brought us here.”
“Could be anybody,” Ryan agreed, cracking his knuckles. A hundred names went through his mind like windblown leaves in autumn.
“Gaia knows, we’ve made enough enemies,” Krysty remarked, brushing back her wildly flexing hair. For every baron they blasted, there always seemed to be some distant kin out for revenge. It didn’t matter that the folks they aced were mad-dog evil, druggie cowards or completely insane. Some distant relative always seemed to want revenge. The world was ruled by the crazy, and there wasn’t much a person could do about the matter, but fight to stay alive.
IN THE FOREST GLEN, the door to the blockhouse was wide open, held in place by a tree branch. Sitting on some ammo boxes in the shade, the Rogan brothers were cleaning their weapons. Walking across the warm grass, Lily stopped near the doorway and bowed her head.
The barefoot woman said nothing, waiting until they spoke first. Sometimes, they didn’t and let her stand there all day while they played cards or slept. She fervently hoped this wasn’t going to be one of those days because their anger over finding out wha
t they missed would be incalculable.
The big men saw her, but continued their work. Softly in the background could be heard the gentle splashing of the little waterfall, the soft crackle of the campfire.
“What’s the bitch cooking at high noon?” Robert muttered in his twisted voice, clumsily sighting down the barrel of his rapidfire to make sure it was thoroughly clean. His left arm was wrapped in bandages from the arrow they had removed. “Bitch is going to faint from the heat, fall in and cook herself.”
“Gotta taste better than everything she cooks,” Edward drawled, thumbing loose predark rounds into an empty clip. Each live brass went firmly into place with a satisfying click.
“There is no fire,” Lily said quickly in relief. “That’s the…the radio.” The tech word tasted like shit in her mouth.
Instantly, the three men dropped the disassembled rapidfires and plowed out of the blockhouse, pushing Lily aside. Charging across the sunny glen, the brothers could now clearly hear the crackle coming from their bikes. Muffled by the sound of the waterfall, the bursts of static coming from the radio built into the two-wheelers sounded almost exactly like a fire burning green wood.
“…ello?” a voice called out. “You assholes awake? Repeat, anybody…” A burst of hash came from the radio blocking the rest of the message.
“Alan?” John demanded, grabbing a mike and thumbing the transmit switch. “That you, bro?”
Whatever came next was lost in a burst of hash, but eventually it cleared. “…epeat, well, it ain’t our sister!” the fourth Rogan snarled. “But good news! They’re here. Arrived last night.”
“All of them?” Edward retorted, the mike almost lost in his massive fingers.
More static almost blanketed the positive reply.
“Where are you?” Robert demanded over the shoulder of the elder Rogan. “The ruins? The water hole? Broke Neck? Iron Mesa?”
“Broke Neck,” Alan answered, the reply wavering in tone and strength as the com link automatically battled the rippling flow of radioactive isotopes in the atmosphere. “Repeat, I’m in Broke Neck. That fragging little mutie baron was right! But more importantly…” The voice faded into silence, and there only came a soft hiss from the speakers like a tire deflating, but it went on and on forever.
