by James Axler
Another snarl of blasterfire rang out. A sec man near the biker dropped, thrashing.
By then Ryan had corrected his aim. The Crazy Dog leaned down over the bars of his big machine as if to accelerate away. Before he could, Ryan had shifted aim a fraction again, drawn a breath, let it partway out, caught it. Squeezed.
The Scout boomed and bucked. The Dog jerked as the speeding 7.62 mm round shattered a vertebra between his shoulder blades and tumbled to bring Hell to his heart and lungs. From the exaggerated spray of blood out the far side of him as the longblaster came back down, Ryan reckoned it had to have made a big exit wound.
The motorcycle fell. Another sec man raced north to south across Ryan’s field of vision, frantically shooting a six-gun-style blaster to the west. He stumbled as red burst from his thigh and went down.
“It’s a trap!” Ryan heard Trumbo holler. “Everyone for himself! Clear out!”
Like flocks of frightened birds, the invaders broke north and south as if suddenly stone desperate to get away from the main street and the gaudy itself, where J.B. and Ricky had joined their fire to Dark Lady’s.
In passing, Ryan decided the slightly built gaudy owner had to be stronger than he thought to hold up that much ammo.
He saw Trumbo speed past on a bike with double exhaust pipes. Ryan snapped a shot at him but missed. The sec boss simply kept going, south. He was getting out of Amity Springs, just as he’d advised his fellow coldhearts to do.
In a moment the intersection, so far as Ryan could tell, was clear of Dogs. At least functioning ones; half a dozen wounded lay in his line of sight, some stirring feebly and moaning, others flopping like landed fish and wailing.
Her twin machine pistols held at the ready, Dark Lady stepped out from behind the cover of the now-dormant Super Dozer.
Ryan had been focusing on the Dogs and sec men as they fled past. He had decided not to waste any more cartridges on them unless any of them showed signs of turning back to the fight. But they didn’t need his help to keep their minds right. Whatever was coming down the main street at the shattered Library Lounge had well and truly impressed them.
Now from the corner of his eye he saw a young Crazy Dog with short blond hair and a batwing mask over his eyes—whether war paint or tattoo, Ryan knew no more than cared—suddenly rear up. He aimed a big double-action blaster at Dark Lady from thirty feet away.
Something to her right had caught her attention. He had her dead to rights.
Once more a blaster ripped on full-auto, this time from so close the echoes hammering back and forth between buildings stung Ryan’s ears almost as much as the shots themselves. This was no 9 mm handblaster like the pair the gaudy owner carried.
The coldheart’s chest exploded red. His blaster hand jerked up. His chill-shot cracked off into the merciless blue of the cloudless early morning sky.
He fell on his face with the floppy finality that told Ryan he was never getting up on his own.
Into the mouth of the intersection came a startling double apparition. It was Sinclair, the wag yard owner Ryan had last seen apparently getting crushed under a barrier wag overturned by the dozer. His face was a mask of sweat-stuck grime, from which his eyes blazed like beacons of vengeance. His coat and shirt were gone. A rough bandage had been wound around his upper torso. It was red-drenched with blood.
He held his BAR in his right hand. A lengthy sling held the barrel up at waist-level shooting position. His left arm was slung over the shoulder of the stocky, crazy-haired, Asian-looking carpenter named Coffin. The coffin-maker held the wrist in place.
“Feed me,” Sinclair called in a feral croak. He dropped the magazine from the well of his Browning. With his right hand Coffin pulled a fresh twenty-round magazine of out of the canvas pouch he wore open on his chest and stuffed it into the longblaster.
They continued to shuffle forward. The wag yard owner’s left leg didn’t seem to be working well, but on they came, into the intersection in front of the sagging, groaning gaudy.
Behind them, the blond kid named Billy scuttled forward and snagged the dropped magazine.
Behind him came the people of Amity Springs, armed and looking very dangerous indeed.
* * *
KRIS HELD AN ax two-handed above her head. The ax descended with a wood-chopping sound.
The wounded biker’s shrieks of agony stopped.
Krysty winced.
She knew the whys and wherefores. These people were prosperous and seemed decent. Even kind—as they could afford to be.
But these were still the Deathlands. It was still a brutal wolf-eat-mutie world. And when it came down to survival they were as hard and harsh as they needed to be.
Just like their unofficial baron, the Dark Lady. Though they didn’t show it, she thought, in quite such an unexpected fashion.
Kneeling over an injured male entertainer who’d been carried from the perilous ruin of the Library Lounge, Mildred glanced up at the sound. Or likely the cessation. She nodded once with what seemed grim satisfaction, then returned to tending the young man’s wounds.
Ryan stood nearby. He held his Scout in both hands and kept his lone blue eye scanning constantly for new danger. He and Krysty were nominally keeping watch—and also catching their breath. Jak had vanished into the Library Lounge, where he was helping a crew led for the moment by Mikey-Bob hunt for survivors. That surprised Krysty more than a little; the young albino generally seemed much more about taking life than preserving it, but then again he also felt a strong instinctive attraction to challenge and danger. With the invaders routed, for the moment, anyway, rescue was the most dangerous game in town.
Dark Lady knelt near another entertainer, a young woman whose eyes stared skyward through a mask of grit-crusted blood. She shook her head and shut those eyes with thumb and forefinger. Then she stood and faced Ryan and his group, who had been standing nearby discussing the situation.
“What will you do now?” she asked.
Despite the gleam of moisture in those black eyes, she presented a very different persona than Krysty had seen from her before—even when she was efficiently and ruthlessly chilling the Crazy Dogs who’d delivered the ultimatum in her gaudy. Then she had seemed little more than a person defending what was hers, although admittedly in more proficient fashion than anticipated. Now, with her coat off and her Micro-Uzis slung under each arm, she looked every inch the trained and seasoned blaster.
“Go after our friend Doc,” Ryan said.
“Now? Just the five of you?”
“If need be.”
“Old Diego’s probably going to be in a vindictive kind of mood once he hears about this,” J.B. said, polishing his glasses on his handkerchief. “Baron Sand isn’t in charge up at Joker Creek anymore. Rules’ve changed.”
“We can’t.”
Krysty looked over. Sinclair sat on a coverlet with a cup of water in his good hand. He refused other care while the worse injured required attention.
“We’ve done what we could,” the wag yard owner said. “A quarter of the ville lies in ruins. People have lost loved ones—or had them hurt bad and in need of care. The Lounge is a deathtrap waiting to collapse. We simply can’t do more to help you, son.”
“Some of us are willing to try,” Kris said, walking up with her ax over her shoulder. The head dripped red.
“No, Mrs. Kennard,” Dark Lady said sadly. “He’s right. If you folks can only wait a day, or better two, then yes. Right now we need to look to our own.”
“So do we,” Ryan said in a raspy voice.
“You’ll throw your lives away,” Sinclair said.
His erstwhile assistant, Coffin, was currently helping shift people out of the gaudy. Even though only the living were being brought out now, more than a few of those would become his customers soon. Like the hapless
young woman Dark Lady had just bid farewell to—Trixie, Krysty remembered her name was.
“There’s still dozens of the bastards left,” Sinclair said. “Who knows how many for sure? And they got that nuking fortress of Sand’s to anchor them. I know you people are ace at what you do. But against odds like—”
“Wait!” Dark Lady called sharply.
At first Krysty thought she had thought of some reason to contradict her former rival—and current ally, it seemed.
Instead she rapped out a command. She was looking past Ryan and his crew toward where a knot of ville folk gathered around another injured Crazy Dog.
This one was a sandy-bearded man whose once-white shirt was soaked with blood on the left side beneath his open black leather jacket. The right leg of his oil-, sweat-and road-grime-befouled jeans was also shiny with fresh wet. Despite at least two wounds, though, he had hauled himself up to prop his back against the building whose corner the dozer had taken out.
“Might as well chill me, too,” he called.
Dark Lady walked toward him. From the way she stiffened, and the black light that flashed in her eyes at that epithet, Krysty thought sure she was about to give him what he asked for.
Instead she wrapped her arms tightly across her chest, beneath her small breasts.
“You seem in a loquacious mood,” she said, walking up close to him. Out of striking range if he decided to make a suicide strike with a knife, Krysty noted.
She nodded at the Amity Springers clustered around the wounded man. They backed off. Reluctantly, Krysty thought.
Ryan and Krysty were following. Mildred kept at her work. “If that fancy-ass word means you think I’ll talk to you,” the man said, “why the nuke not? There aren’t any secrets about what I got to say.”
“What, then?” Ryan demanded.
“Well, we’re taking over,” the coldheart said.
“Joker Springs?” Dark Lady asked.
He laughed, then winced at the pain that caused, then laughed again.
“For starters,” he said. “Diego and the rest of the boys and girls are back there now teaching the peasants who’s boss. And having themselves some fun with that freak show of that fat-ass Sand’s. Sorry to miss out on that part.”
“My sympathies,” Dark Lady said dryly.
He laughed again, then turned aside to spit blood. It mildly surprised Krysty he hadn’t tried to spit it at Dark Lady. But he no doubt realized the range was too great for that.
“Oh, well. Can’t win ’em all. And you bastards can’t win at all!”
“Meaning what?” Ryan said.
“Meaning Diego’s put out the word to some of our brother and sister clans. The Suave Monks and the Skull-Shaggers. People like that—like us. We’re taking over the Basin. We’ll get Joker Creek beaten into line. Then we’ll come back here and finish the job proper. And after that we’ll take down Río Piojo, and have ourselves an empire!”
Dark Lady looked at Ryan. He looked sternly back.
“Then we can’t hang around licking our wounds.” Mikey-Bob’s voice boomed from behind.
Krysty turned. The two-headed giant had emerged from the wreckage. Both his heads were coated in dirt and sweat. Jak followed him.
“Looks like nobody’s left inside who’s still breathing, D.L.,” Bob said wearily. “A stiff breeze’d blow this kid away to look at him. But he can sniff out survivors like an old bloodhound.”
Jak came up dusting his hands together.
“And you’re wrong,” Mikey said to his brother. “We need to hunker down.”
“He’s right,” Sinclair said, shuffling up to join the others.
Coffin had emerged from the half-destroyed gaudy, as well, and was once more serving as the red-mustached man’s support. Krysty realized he likewise figured the only ones left inside were his clients. And they had infinite patience.
“Now it’s obvious,” the wag yard owner said. “We have no choice but to concentrate on shoring up our defenses against the storm to come.”
“Speak for yourself, Mr. Sinclair,” Kris Kennard declared. “Plenty of us are willing to march right on over to Joker Creek and settle this for good and all. One way or another.”
While much of the ville’s population was involved with rescue and aid missions of their own, the confrontation with the shot-up captive had begun to attract a growing crowd.
Now they raised a many-voiced growl of agreement.
Sinclair shook his head. “There are too many of them to overcome by storm, anyway. We have no choice but to get ready to defeat them here, protecting what remains of our homes!”
“Good luck with that,” the Crazy Dog coldheart said, sneering. “The storm Diego’s raising will wipe this rat hole right off the Basin slicker than that triple-stupe dozer ever could. He’s a magic bastard, and he’s got a plan.”
Krysty thought he was miffed at losing center stage.
From somewhere came a rising growl of engine noise. Ryan stiffened. Krysty found her snub-nosed blaster in her hand without conscious intent. Around them the knot of ville folk gathered around the wounded coldheart lost their sullen looks in favor of varying degrees of alarm and readiness.
Billy came running out the mouth of the main street. “It’s Mr. Dix and Ricky!” he cried excitedly.
A moment later the Crazy Dogs’ machine-gun wag rolled into view and stopped. J.B. and Ricky got out of the cab.
“Your shot just busted the tire,” J.B. said. “Nothing structural. And they had a spare.”
Dark Lady and Ryan exchanged glances again.
“I believe this shifts the odds in our favor,” she said.
“What about Sand’s castle?” Bob said. “It’d take that dozer to make any impression on it.”
“Say! What about it?” his twin asked, brightening. “You’re some kind of mechanical wizard, Dix. You even got you a likely sorcerer’s apprentice. Can you fix that tread?”
“In a few days,” J.B. said, “and with the proper tools. It’s not like changing a tire on a wag, friend.”
“I have some more blocks of C-4 plas-ex,” Dark Lady said thoughtfully. “And blasting caps.”
“Hope you don’t have those stored together,” J.B. said. Then he smiled. “But if that’s the case, I believe we can do business.”
“You’re willing to blast the playhouse down on top of your own pal?” Bob asked.
J.B. chuckled. “Oh, I don’t reckon your boss has enough plas-ex for that. No, not much danger there. But I bet we can knock a nice new door open.”
“He knows what he’s doing with plas-ex!” Ricky proclaimed. “None better.”
“Kid’s right,” Ryan said.
“It’s insane!” Sinclair exclaimed.
“Much as I hate to agree with the man,” Bob said, “he’s right.”
“Bullshit!” Mikey roared. “Did you just give me sole proprietorship of our balls, or what?”
“Listen, you dark-haired son of a bit—”
“Enough,” Dark Lady said.
She didn’t raise her voice, but she didn’t need to. A single finger upraised in the giant’s direction and both twins instantly shut up.
“I find I have come to agree with Mr. Cawdor,” she said. “The news that the Crazy Dogs expect imminent reinforcement changes the situation quite dramatically. Win or lose, we cannot remain passive.”
“Dark Lady, please—” the wag yard owner began.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Sinclair,” she said. “I know you have the ville’s safety at heart. Nobody could possibly doubt that, given what you did today. And you have my gratitude for rallying the counterattack that saved us.”
Stubbornly, Sinclair shook his balding head. “All I did was get myself up and go after the bastards,” he said. “Cou
ldn’t’ve done that much without Mr. Coffin’s help. The rest—that was the ville’s people themselves.”
“So much the braver, then,” Dark Lady said. “But I for one refuse to wait.”
She turned to Ryan. “Lead us, Mr. Cawdor. I shall follow. And anyone who wishes may, as well.”
“It won’t be easy,” Ryan said. “For one thing, we still have to get close enough to blow a hole in that adobe fort. And there’re still a large number of Crazy Dogs and that fat scumbag turncoat bastard Trumbo’s sec men who’ll have something to say about that. Even with the M-60’s firepower on our side, plenty of people marching over to Joker Creek with us won’t be marching back on their own legs.”
“I’m in!” Kris declared, brandishing her bloody ax.
“So am I,” said Stuart Marquez, a young wag repairman who had lost his wife to the intruders.
Other voices joined in. Not all the assembled ville folk agreed, but plenty did.
Krysty grieved for the losses to come, though her heart was gladdened that they’d have help rescuing Doc.
“What about you?” Dark Lady said to the wounded coldheart. “Are you willing to surrender and give me your parole not to escape, if I give you your life in return?”
“Hell no!” the wounded coldheart snarled. “If I can get my pins under me, I’ll fight you, with my teeth and bare hands if I got to. And if not, I reckon I’ll just sit by and drink and laugh while I watch hundreds of the rastiest, nastiest, coldest bastards and slavers to ride the West rape your bony ass to death. So you might as well just chill me, bitch!”
“As you wish,” Dark Lady said coldly.
Like smooth lightning, she withdrew her right-hand machine pistol. It stuttered deafeningly.
The quick pulse of 9 mm bullets smashed the coldheart’s face into itself in red ruin like a blow from a sledgehammer.
“I really dislike the word bitch.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“It was a trap,” Doc heard Trumbo exclaim breathlessly from the salon. “They took out the dozer and shot the rest of us to shit. I was lucky to bring anybody back alive.”
