by James Axler
Setting the parking brake with a yank, Stephen stared at the leader of the sec men as he came closer. The rest of the troopers stayed where they were, their longblasters held casually, but with their fingers on the triggers. They weren't expecting any trouble, just ready for it. From previous trips, Stephen knew there were more sec men hidden in the trees to give additional support should the need arise. This fork was a major approach to the ville and was always well-defended.
It was the shirts that bothered him. The material was brown, not the blue of Overton's private army. What had happened in Front Royal during his absence?
As the sergeant stopped well away from the van, Stephen rolled down the window and managed to smile, politely keeping both of his hands in plain sight. He had a revolver at his hip, and a shotgun was clipped to the ceiling. But the slightest move toward either of those weapons would probably be the last thing he ever did.
"Hey," the sec man said in greeting.
Stephen nodded. "Good morning, sir. How much?"
Hooking thumbs into his gun belt, the sergeant snorted a laugh. "That's all done with. No more tolls on this road by order of Baron Cawdor."
Something was wrong here; Stephen knew it and took a chance. "Cawdor?" he asked, trying to sound puzzled. "I thought the baron here was named Overton."
A sneer replaced the smile. "He's dead. Got chilled by his own troops. Nathan Cawdor is the rightful baron here."
Dead? So the invasion failed. Sweat broke out over Stephen's body as he smiled to the news. "Great! I heard Overton was a real son of a bitch."
"Pretty bad," the sec man agreed, looking at the line of trucks. "All three of these wags belong to you?"
"Yeah, we caravan through the hills together. Safer that way, you know, muties and coldhearts."
The smile returned, but not with much warmth. "I hear you. Much trouble in the passes?"
"No. A few stickies, nothing more. We travel at night when it's too cold for anybody to try jacking us."
"Pretty smart." The smile stayed, but the eyes became hard. "What's the cargo?"
Stephen started to say wire, but stopped himself. For some reason Overton had wanted insulated cable from predark buildings and lots of it Who knew why? Mebbe he wanted to electrify all of Front Royal. Yeah, right. Few villes were able to sustain a constant supply of electricity. Most folks considered it a myth. And there was no chance that Nathan would want the cable for the same purpose as Overton. But what else could copper wiring be used for? An answer was needed immediately, and Stephen surprised himself by dredging up a vague memory of a phrase he heard somewhere.
"Refined metal," he lied smoothly. "For making jacketed bullets." The sec man looked properly impressed. "Plus, a few passengers."
"Muties?"
"Norms, I assure you."
Narrowing his eyes, the sergeant seemed skeptical. "How many?"
"Ten."
"Any skilled workers, carpenters, masons?"
"Hell, I have no idea," Stephen answered honestly. "You'd have to ask them."
"Mebbe I will. Any jolt or weed?"
"I don't traffic in drugs," Stephen snapped, then hastily added, "sir."
The sec man chuckled. "Saved yourself a hanging here, friend. You must have been here before."
The words were so matter-of-fact, Stephen almost admitted the truth. Only a lifelong habit of lying stopped him. So the sec men were looking for folks who dealt with Overton, eh? That news could be worth something to a smart man.
"Nope," he replied amiably. "The last owner sold me his wags for some predark medicine I found in a ruin. He had the bleeding cough and was dying."
A minute passed, with the sergeant studying the expression on Stephen's face.
"It was a fair trade," Stephen added hastily, as if cutting off an expected argument. "He lived."
The sec man made no reply.
Stephen knew this was another test to rattle his nerves, so he tried to appear frightened, which was easy, and slightly confused. Innocent folks always seemed to be confused.
"Nothing else?" the man asked. The guards at the blockhouse were watching the exchange, their blasters pointing toward the caravan. From a truck behind him, Stephen heard one of the other drivers nervously cough, the noise unnaturally loud in the tense silence.
"Okay, okay, I'm also hauling shine," Stephen admitted, ever so slowly lifting a clay jug into view. There was a cross of tape on the side patching a small crack. "Good stuff, mighty smooth."
"Nothing wrong with hauling shine," the sergeant said tersely, a hand going to the checkered grip of the blaster on his hip. "If it's clean. An outlander sold some to us once that killed two of my men and made another go blind. Took us a week to find him again, then it took him a week to die."
Wordlessly, Stephen uncorked the jug and took a long pull. The home-brew whiskey burned his gullet like flaming battery acid, but he managed not to gag.
"Have a sip," he said hoarsely, offering the jug. "Good for what ails you."
Grinning, the sergeant started to reach for the container, then glanced at the blockhouse. "Thanks anyway, but it's not allowed," he said sternly, lowering his hand. "The baron forbids drinking on duty."
"A wise policy," Stephen agreed, placing aside the jug. "Smart man."
"That he is." The sergeant turned toward the cabin and tugged on an earlobe, then dusted off his shoulder. The guards relaxed and slung their blasters. A few started smoking hand-rolled cigs.
"Okay, here are the rules," the sergeant said, speaking in an odd singsong way as if quoting from memory. "There ain't no jolt or slaves in Front Royal. Anybody says different is lying. Stealing gets you whipped, rape gets you hanged. Stay on the road. There are land mines in the fields. Watch out for cougars, we've had some killings at the farms. You spot anybody wearing a blue shirt, avoid them like a mutie with the plague. Report finding a blue, and you get a reward. Understand?"
"Sure. A blue shirt?"
"That's what I said." The soldier waved the van onward. "Welcome to Front Royal."
Starting the engine, Stephen touched two fingers to his forehead, and the sergeant actually snapped a formal salute in return. Once the road took the blockhouse out of sight, Stephen braked to a halt and climbed from the van. As he stiffly walked over to the first truck, the driver stuck his head out the window. The glass was long gone, replaced by a sheet of tar paper to help cut the wind.
"What now, fatty?" the muscular man snarled. Dressed in badly cured animal skins, he reeked of rotting flesh enough to mask the sour stink of his unwashed body. In the front seat alongside him was a skinny woman snoring loudly, a chicken bone from dinner sticking out of her slack mouth.
"Taking a leak," Stephen said, strolling into the forest. "Be right back."
The moment he was hidden by the bushes, Stephen bent over and violently retched, the shine burning much worse coming out than it had going in. When he was finished, Stephen wiped off his mouth with some leaves and weakly stumbled to the van. Starting the engine with fumbling hands, he continued driving toward the ville.
Okay, Overton was dead; now he would work for Nathan Cawdor. Fine. Barons were all the same, murdering coldhearts who lived on blood. Only their names changed. And if Nathan was a good man, well, then, he could always travel north to BullRun ville and work for the mad bitch in charge up there. She kept a mutie assassin to chill her enemies. That was more reasonable. But either way, he would stay in business, finding things for the monsters who ruled the world. Life would go on without interruption.
Stephen was a survivor.
THE SOUND OF HAMMERING filled the streets and houses of Front Royal, along with the steady sawing of wood.
Watching the work across the ville, Baron Nathan Cawdor stood on the third floor of the destroyed keep, the shattered brick walls rising only to his knees. At the base of the keep, workers picked through the rubble, salvaging individual bricks and cleaning them off to add to the growing pile.
A few blocks away, scaffoldin
g rose around the ville castle like loving hands, holding the weakened walls in place until the sloping supports could be trusted to hold the awesome weight of the new granite blocks.
Day and night, the construction continued, repairing the tremendous damage done by the invaders. The bodies were gone from the streets, the damaged cobblestones in the main courtyard replaced with fresh ones. The new horse stable was only a wooden skeleton, the horses temporarily housed in the great hall of Castle Cawdor.
Nathan shivered slightly from a cold wind. His clothes were patched but spotlessly clean, the boots shiny with polish. Oiled blasters rode at each hip, and a monstrously huge .44-caliber Desert Eagle pistol rested in a position of honor in a shoulder holster. The weapon had been pried from the cold gray hand of Overton as he lay sprawled in the mud.
"Afternoon, my husband," a lovely woman said, advancing with a cape folded over an arm. Her long hair was tied back off her plain face, and a knit scarf was wound about her throat, accenting her pale skin. She wore a long coat over a loose gown of royal brown, and heavy pants peeked out from below the pleated skirt. An Ingram M-10 submachine gun had been slung over her shoulder for easy access.
Lady Tabitha Cawdor walked toward her husband and offered him the garment. "It's too cold for you to be standing here without a coat."
"Do our sec men have coats?" Nathan replied wearily, watching the armed guards walk the palisades of the walled ville. Many had tied blankets around their bodies with lengths of rope as protection from the wind. Others wore less and shivered. "Do the workers below, do the old?"
Gently, Tabitha brushed a hand against the baron's scarred cheek. Her fingernails were stubby and cracked, her hand covered with scabs, the wounds still healing from her many days of torture. "No, my love, they do not."
"Then while I stay here in public sight, neither do I," Nathan answered. "If I can't make them warm, I can at least share the weather and make them feel less miserable."
She glanced at the sky and drew her coat closed tighter. "Any sign of snow?"
"Thankfully, no. Every day gets us closer to repairing the wall and drawbridge. Once we're behind stone again, I can turn our attention to fixing the homes and other buildings. How's the laundry coming?"
Tabitha almost smiled. Laundry, such a nice way of referring to stripping the dead of their torn clothing. "The sewing is nearly done on the shirts," she reported. "Next we dye the blue cloth brown, or rather purple, as quickly as we can. In a few days, everybody will have an extra shirt to wear. Then we start on the boots and pants. Come the full moon, even the old will be warm."
"Good. And the food supply?"
"Adequate. With the hunters bringing in more meat daily, we should survive until spring." She offered the coat again. "Please?"
"I can't."
Tabitha gestured at herself. "Yet I can?"
"You just gave birth," he said tolerantly. "They understand."
Pushing a wheelbarrow full of bricks, a man wearing rags for boots paused to catch his breath in the street below and waved at the couple standing high above the ville. Nathan stood taller and nodded in reply. Flexing his hands to restore circulation, the worker returned to his task and pushed the bricks toward the construction crew at the barbican of the front gate.
"Is the baby healthy?" Nathan asked in sudden concern, taking his wife by the arm. "Is that why you're really here?"
"Alexander is fine. Sleeping with his wet nurse, and a dozen sec men," Tabitha added pointedly, patting his cold hand. She was too thin and sickly to breast-feed the infant. However, many woman in the ville had lost newborns in the terrible war, and it had been no problem to find one willing to suckle the next baron.
"The guards are necessary. Overton tried using you to seize the ville," Nathan growled, the tendons in his neck tightening from barely controlled rage. "Our son would make an even better key."
"Your uncle's bastard son is dead," she reminded him, shivering in spite of the warmth of her coat.
"Besides," a new voice stated, "I'm here now."
The Cawdors turned at the pronouncement and watched as Clemont Brigitine Turpin stepped into view from the exposed stone stairwell. The grizzled soldier was dressed in heavy leather clothing, with an Enfield longblaster slung across his wide back. Two bandoliers of ammo crisscrossed his chest, the handle of a knife jutted from his boot and a hatchet was slung at his side where a handblaster should have been.
"My dear Lieutenant Turpin," Tabitha said, smiling.
His broad features dusky with a growing beard, the big man scowled. "Clem," he replied in a friendly manner. "Just Clem, my lady. I ain't no royalty. Just a grunt."
"Chief of my sec men," Nathan corrected sternly, noting the other man's serious expression. Few things bothered Clem, and most of those got aced immediately. The big backwoodsman wasn't a believer in either forgiveness or patience.
Just then a squad of sec men climbed out of the hole in the floor where the stairs ended and moved quickly across the bare expanse of concrete. Longblasters at the ready, the guards circled the Cawdors, keeping close together. Every man carried an AK-47 salvaged from the war, a bulging pouch of precious ammo clips slung over his side.
"What's the matter?" Nathan demanded. "Have more blues been found in the woods?"
"Hell, no," Clem drawled, his thick accent slurring the words. "Patrol finds them, they chill them. Don't need to bring that detail to you. But there's a new problem, yeah. Our spy from Bull Run ville says their baron believes you plan on invading them with the new troops that arrived last month."
Softly, the mountain wind ruffled their clothing, finding bare skin through every tiny lace hole and opening.
"But Overton's troops are dead."
"She don't know that."
"And she wouldn't believe us if we told her." Nathan glanced at the handful of people working on the front gate. "We will have to move fast if they're planning on attacking first. The ville can't withstand a charge by blind rabbits at the moment. Not until that damn drawbridge is repaired!"
"We can stop them," Clem stated confidently.
Nathan frowned. "Unless she's not sending her army, but just one man. One thing, actually."
Clem furrowed his brow. "Y'all mean an assassin?"
"A mutie by the name of Sullivan." Nathan drew the Desert Eagle and dropped the clip to examine the load. "Shitfire, I had heard the thing was dead years ago. I once saw him rip the throat out of a griz bear on a bet. Didn't even work up a sweat."
"Are you serious?" Tabitha asked, sounding frightened.
"Totally. He's a monster, and damn hard to kill. Many have tried and failed. Sullivan drank their blood and mutilated the corpse for laughs."
Without speaking, Tabitha tucked her hands up the sleeves of her coat, and they heard the soft metallic clack of a blaster's hammer being cocked.
"I'll be in the nursery until further notice," she announced, and strode toward the stairs.
"Stay with her!" Clem ordered, pointing, and half of the attending sec men started after the woman. The rest clustered tighter around the baron.
"Sullivan," Nathan muttered, checking the ammo in his snub-nosed .38 revolver. "This could be worse than Overton."
"Mebbe you should stay out of sight till I find this asswipe," Clem suggested, sliding the Enfield off his shoulder and working the bolt. "Direct the rebuilding from inside the castle, or mebbe the barracks?"
"I won't hide," Nathan answered brusquely, holstering the blaster. "Besides, Sullivan is an expert at disguises. He can even mimic another person's voice so that in the darkness you think it's them. Damnedest thing. I heard that was how he chilled the last baron of Bull Run castle."
"I could interrogate everybody new," Clem suggested. An assassin was something novel to the hunter. Barroom brawls were more his kind of fight.
Walking to the edge of the roof, Nathan gazed upon the hustling ville. "Not necessary. Sullivan can use gloves and cosmetics to hid his green skin, and wigs to cover his bald hea
d, but there's one thing he can't alter. His height. Take troops, ten-on-ten formation. The second group stays away from the first to give cover fire. Then go through the ville and strip naked anybody you find over six feet tall. Men and women."
The remaining sec men murmured in apprehension.
"We'll also double-check any crips," Clem added. "Pretending you don't have legs would be a good way to hide height."
Nathan nodded. "Consider anybody sitting a potential enemy, and be ready to act."
"Oh, we'll capture him, Baron," a sec man stated confidently, brandishing his blaster. "Have no fear of that!"
"Capture? Don't even try," Nathan retorted, turning away from the ville. "When you find a bald man with greenish skin, chill him on sight. Which means a head shot, one in each eye. Then set the body on fire."
Then Nathan added softly, almost as if speaking to himself, "Hopefully, that will be enough."
Chapter Four
Shuddering and clanking, the APC crept along the smooth shore of the North Carolina river basin. The soft sand rose high, almost to the rims of the seven tires. The eighth hung in tatters off the rim, flopping about uselessly as the wag forged onward with ever decreasing speed.
With the tip of his knife, Ryan removed the damp rag from an ob port and looked outside. On the horizon, black clouds filled the sky, and orange flames licked upward from the raging inferno of the cornfield.
"Far enough?" Krysty coughed. The interior of the wag was misty with smoke and reeked of pungent human sweat.
"Yeah," he decided. "We're a good mile clear of the cornfield. Stop here and let's see how much of a wag we still have."
"Sure," Krysty grunted, fighting the clutch to shift into park. The gear refused to cooperate, so she tried neutral and managed to kill the engines. The cacophony from underneath the metal floor receded and finally stopped.
Climbing into the turret, Doc threw open the top hatch, and cool fresh air flooded into the APC. "Ah, ambrosia of the gods," he said, inhaling deeply.
