by James Axler
The amplified voice boomed out once more, the volume turned to maximum.
"Come in, Ryan. And the boy. Take your chances here. If you don't, these six good people will go down, one after the other. Every ten minutes by my trusty old chron. Nothing'll save 'em, Ryan. Just like the blood of my six good people, the blood of this six will lie on your heart." He paused again, then carried on. "And after these six we'll have another lottery, One-Eye. And another. Until this square is waist deep in corpses and ankle deep in their innocent blood."
Mildred knew instantly in the core of her soul that Strasser was totally, clinically, homicidally insane. She didn't doubt that he spoke the truth, nor that he'd carry through his promise until not one of the settlers remained alive. She also knew that if Ryan and Jak were to surrender themselves to Skullface, their passing would be both long and hard.
"You got ten minutes before number one goes down, Cawdor! Ten minutes!"
Five minutes later, in the sun-bleached bones of the old firehouse, Ryan stared blankly out across the baked land, his eye unfocused, his mind racing furiously. Krysty joined him, touching him gently on the arm, stirring him from his reverie. He looked around at her, seeing the question, in her eyes, answering it.
"I don't know, lover. I truly don't know."
Chapter Twenty-Seven
THE DISTORTED, echoing voice boomed, "Nine minutes and counting, Cawdor! I know you're out there, listening, probably watching. So, watch this."
Mildred had eased herself back in the crowd, toward the half-open door of one of the smaller buildings linked to the main engine house. Her eyes roamed around, looking at the nearest guards, trying to find out what they were watching, how alert they were.
Ryan had twice brought his G-12 rifle to his shoulder, peering through the sights at Strasser, finger hovering on the trigger. Then he put the long gun aside, knowing that this wasn't the time.
"Too late this time around, Cawdor!" Strasser laid the speaker aside and gestured to Rafe to bring the first lucky winner of the black-stone lottery to the front.
"It's Frank Wells, boss."
Mildred recognized him. He was the brother of one of Elder Vare's cabal of preachers, a quiet man, who was married to a deaf-mute woman, who stood near Mildred, silently tearing a handkerchief to bits.
Strasser put the machine pistol onto single-fire. "Any last words, Mr. Wells?"
"This ain't right," Wells said so softly that his words barely carried.
Cort Strasser nodded approvingly. "That's the truth, Mr. Wells. Just step here and open up your mouth a moment. I promise you this won't hurt you hardly at all."
The settler did as he was told, looking up at the immensely tall man and dutifully parting his lips for the muzzle of the Stechkin.
To the crowd looking on, the sound of the shot was muted. The bullet tore through and smashed away the back of Frank Wells's skull, sending a chunk of bone as big as a saucer to land spinning in the dirt only a foot or so away from his wife, who promptly dropped in a dead faint.
Mildred didn't blink at the execution. The sight reminded her oddly of the home movie of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, with a mist of blood and brains hazing from the exit wound.
The same memory struck Doc Tanner. "By the three Kennedys," he muttered, drawing a warning glance from one of his trio of guards.
Of the group of watchers across the desert, only Jak said anything, and that was a single, harsh expletive.
Major Seth Ward turned his head and threw up on the dusty planks of the firehouse floor.
Strasser picked up the speaker again. "See that, Cawdor? That's one. Sure you don't want to save lives? Number two comes up in—" he consulted his wrist chron again "—in nine minutes and eleven seconds."
The minutes ticked by, and this time it was one of the women, an elderly matriarch with a squint who tried to swing a roundhouse punch at Strasser and was eventually held by two of the guards. The bullet was administered, classically, in the back of the neck and she went down like a sack of rags, life flowing from her as the crowd looked on in silence.
"Soon be three, Cawdor!"
THE DISCUSSION WAS urgent and intense. It was obviously out of the question for Ryan and Jak to even think of giving themselves up to Strasser. It would have been simpler to kiss their own blasters.
"Just chill Strasser," was J.B.'s suggestion, "then put as much lead as we all can into the guards. Let everyone take their chances."
"Doc and Mildred could go down, but we can't hold off until that ice-bellied son of a bitch shoots everyone." Krysty fought to control her anger at what was happening, anger at their helplessness in the face of Strasser's malevolent cunning.
"I know that! Fireblast! You think I'm some fucking triple stupe?" Ryan was losing control of his own temper, unable to see a better option than that offered by J.B., yet knowing that the inevitable result would be a charnel house with dozens left looking blank-eyed at the sky.
"Let me creepy-crawl. Knife Skullface."
Ryan shook his head. "No, Jak. That's no better than any other idea. Worse, because it'll probably mean you getting chilled as well."
Krysty punched her right hand hard into her left fist. "We have to do something!"
"THREE!"
The child, a little boy, had seen the two executions, but clearly hadn't made the connection with his own presence out in front of the crowd. Now, as one of the women guards took him by the hand to lead him to the waiting Strasser, he began to weep, pulling back, red-eyed and bawling.
"Let him go!" a man shouted.
"You come and take his place? Then come on down, sir!"
"I will! Oh, Sweet Savior on the Cross! Spare him and take me instead!"
Mildred was now against the half-open door, hands brushing the flakes of sunbaked paint, testing it gently and feeling the hint of movement. She had no idea what was inside, but she knew that it had to be better than what was happening out there. She pushed a bit harder, wincing as hinges squeaked, unoiled for a hundred years. But nobody looked around. Everyone was glued to the drama at the center of the square.
"You the mother?" Strasser called, pointing the riding crop at the crying woman.
"Yes, sir. Yes, I am." She was in her thirties, with lank blond hair and pendulous breasts. Tears coursed over her cheeks and dripped down the front of her dimity dress.
"Then call out to Ryan Cawdor and mebbe he'll hear you. Mebbe the cries of a mother will soften that stone heart."
Strasser smiled contentedly as the mother of the little boy ran a few hesitant steps forward, cupping her hands to her mouth and looking all around her, as if Ryan were going to appear in front of her. The former sec boss gestured for her to start calling out.
"Mr. Cawdor! Come in, please do. And my Gavin'll be saved. He's only a little lad, Mr. Cawdor, and you're a man, full grown. It's not fair for him to suffer for you!" Her voice was so loud that it seemed as if her throat would tear apart.
Strasser picked a gap between her screams. "Fuck this, lady. It's a waste of time. Bust the kid, Rafe. Don't squander a bullet on it."
The hardwood sticks whirred like a plunging falcon and one of them cracked across the side of the child's head, splitting the skull like a soft egg.
The mother stared, unbelievingly for a moment, then ran clumsily toward the twitching corpse, hands outstretched. Strasser leveled the Stechkin and shot her once between the breasts, the impact knocking her flat on her back, hands flailing for balance. She fell in the dirt, still crying out. At a movement from Strasser the woman guard knelt and efficiently opened up the artery in her throat.
The speaker came up again to the thin, stenciled lips. "See that, Cawdor? Three and four go down together. Soon be five and six. Best give yourself up now!"
Ryan had the G-12 again at his shoulder, looking stone-eyed along the barrel, whispering to the others out of the corner of his mouth. "That's it. Get ready and we'll try to—"
J.B., who'd been using the spyglass, stopped him.
"Hold it."
"What?"
"It's Mildred. She's gone."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
MILDRED WAS AS MAD as hell, and she wasn't going to take any more. What she'd seen had pushed her back in time, to when she was a little girl in the South and witnessed the strange fruit that dangled from the trees, blackened and mutilated. Ever since then she'd been possessed of a virulent hatred of injustice and bloody oppression. Her only wish now was to find the house where she and Doc had hidden their blasters and their ammo and return to the stone yard.
"Chill as many as I can before they chill me," she muttered to herself, moving quickly through the shadowed depths of the building, passing relics of the railroad, including torn posters, signal lamps and, tucked away in a corner, a peculiar trolley with flanged wheels and a center-mounted pumping handle.
But none of that interested the woman. Knowing that all Strasser's forces were gathered by the engine house, she was able to take chances. She exited a side door, blinking in the bright morning sunlight, and cut across by the row of small shops and down an alley between a video rental store and a thrift shop.
She hesitated a moment as she emerged into a wider street, looking left and then right, finally recognizing where she was.
Mildred could see the house where the weapons were hidden, and she was already slowing from a jog when she heard the unmistakable crack of the Stechkin being fired again.
"Four," she whispered, four of the original six that the lottery had selected.
She stooped and fumbled under the porch, feeling the chill as her hands only encountered rubbish—old cans, amorphous paper, and cardboard and plastic. Mildred felt further, ignoring the booming voice of Cort Strasser through the speaker, warning Ryan that the deaths would continue.
"Ah, thank you Jesus," she said, fingers touching the smooth heaviness of gunmetal. She pulled out her ZKR 551, tucking it into the back of her navy pants, finding the handful of ammo and slipping it into her pocket. She grabbed Doc's massive Le Mat, filling her other pocket with his spare ammunition.
"Now," she breathed.
"THINK SKULLFACE'LL really take the lives of all them good folk?" Major Ward asked. "Don't seem right to me."
"Doesn't seem right to me, either," Krysty agreed, "but that's what he'll do."
"Won't be long before he realizes that you're not going to come out," J.B. said. "Then what, Ryan?"
"Then he'll use Doc. That'll be the next step along."
There were still two of the doomed hostages, standing together. One was visibly weeping, but the other was managing an outward display of bravery.
"Mildred?" Jak asked.
"She'll be looking for us, I guess. Mebbe we should move to try to link up with her."
They all heard Strasser again. "I'm getting tired of this, One-Eye! Let's take out five and six together. Then I figure it's time for our mutual friend, Theophilus Tanner, to do his stuff. Maybe he'll be more persuasive than me."
J.B. had the glass to his eye, his spectacles pushed up on his forehead, in the shade of the fedora's brim.
"Making them kneel," he reported. "Doc's still got three blasters around him. They're watching the killings. Everyone is."
Ryan reached a decision. "That's enough. I'm going to chill Strasser now. We'll go in and take out who we can. Rest'll have to look to their luck. It's gone on long enough." He brought the smooth shape of the G-12 to his shoulder.
"Strasser's come down off his box."
"I can still hit him. A head shot."
J.B. was scanning the crowd. "They look like they're all in shock. Don't know how… Dark night!"
Ryan took his finger off the trigger. "What is it?"
The Armorer turned to him. "It's Mildred. She just came back."
Mildred had heard Strasser's booming voice, promising the double execution, and she hurried to rejoin the crowd of settlers. She'd hidden Doc's old pistol in the top of her pants, pulling out her white blouse to cover it. Her own pistol was resting snugly in the small of her back.
The door she'd escaped through still stood a few inches ajar. Mildred slowed to a cautious walk, aware that there could easily be armed men waiting for her behind that door.
"If there are, then there are," she said, drawing the Czech target revolver and feeling its reassuring weight in her hand. There would be real compensation if only she could take some of them with her, leave things a little cleaner.
Through the gap, she could see the backs of some of the settlers, none of them looking in her direction. Every one of them was staring fixedly toward the center of the square.
Mildred eased herself through the doorway, blinking as her eyes adjusted again to the bright morning sunlight. The corpses lay where they'd fallen, the pools of blood thick with gorging flies. Two men knelt before Strasser, one of them with his hands clasped together in prayer. The leader of the gang stood towering over them, the Stechkin held loosely in his right hand. Over to the right, near the entrance to one of the engine-house buildings, Doc Tanner stood with three armed men around him. The rest of the twenty or so guards stood in a loose circle, three or four of them near the locomotive.
The settlers were like a flock of patient sheep, their faces showing emotions that ran from anger to blank disbelief. But the threat of the overwhelming firepower kept them cowed.
"Very well, Cawdor! Here goes with the next two! And then we'll take us a break and have us another lottery:"
Mildred was about forty yards from Cort Strasser, barely half that distance away from Doc Tanner. She eased the ZKR 551 from its hiding place.
J.B. DROPPED the glass. "Rad-blast it!"
"What?"
"Get ready. I just spotted Mildred pull out that target blaster of hers."
In the square Mildred steadied her breathing, making a conscious effort to slow her heart. She used the Zen techniques that she'd been taught when she'd taken up pistol shooting, techniques that had brought her an Olympic silver medal.
Strasser was leveling the machine pistol, his reptilian tongue darting out to brush his bloodless lips.
"Listen to death, Ryan Cawdor!" the leather-clad figure screeched.
"Spare me, Jesus!" one of the kneeling men yelled.
"Die slow, you bastard," said the other, face turned stubbornly up to Strasser.
"Die fast, fucker," the ex-sec boss replied, squeezing the trigger twice.
The first bullet drilled between the man's eyes, knocking him on his back in the dirt, all life immediately gone.
The noise of the gun made the praying man start sideways, so that Strasser's second shot, even at point-blank range, nearly missed. It ripped off his ear, creasing his skull, bringing a fountain of blood, the spent round burying itself in the man's right shoulder.
He slapped at Strasser in his agonized shock, struggling to get to his feet. The Stechkin snapped a third time and he went down alongside the other corpses, one hand opening and closing convulsively.
The cobbled yard was totally silent, and every single pair of eyes was focused on the scene of the brutal executions.
Every pair of eyes but one.
Mildred's.
As calmly as if she stood in the target butts of her old hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska, she leveled the revolver and began to shoot, careful, spaced shots, picking her targets with care.
"Let's go," Ryan ordered.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
DOC WAS the only person out in the yard who'd spotted the disappearance, of the stocky black woman, and it had been a great relief to him to see her make her safe getaway. If Strasser hadn't been blinded by his own quest for vengeance against Ryan and Jak, he'd probably have followed a slower course of careful interrogation, which would have meant speedy betrayal for Mildred.
Now she was gone.
Doc had taken a private wager with himself, trying to figure out what Ryan would be doing. He guessed that the first deaths would do nothing to stir him from hiding, and that Ryan's fighting brain would tell h
im that Strasser would go through with his threat, would massacre every man, woman and child on the wag train just to ease his own lust for blood.
The only question was, when would Ryan make some sort of move and how would he do it?
Doc knew his own fate was sealed. The odds were too high for any rescue bid, but there was the hope that Ryan might be able to use his rifle to take the life of Cort Strasser, even though it wouldn't save most of the hostages.
"Might be joining you shortly, Emily, my dear," the old man whispered.
Then Mildred came back again. Doc blinked, wondering whether his brain had slipped sideways into the darkness once more.
"Why?" he said, wincing at the triple echo of the last execution shots. Then he saw the gleam of sunlight off blued steel and he knew.
"SAVE A LAST bullet for the woman." The words rolled around Mildred's mind, even though she couldn't recall what old flick she'd heard them in. It sounded like big John Wayne should have said them. Maybe he did.
The Zbrojovka revolver had been chambered to use the common Smith & Wesson .38-caliber rounds, six of them. Mildred had thought through what she was going to do with all six, and she moved her hand steadily from target to target.
For someone who had a party trick of putting a bullet clean through the center pip of the five of hearts at thirty long paces, killing men at less than that range wasn't hard. Not once you'd set your mind to doing it.
Doc winced at the hot slicing sound of the bullet that killed the guard on his immediate left, striking him smack between the eyes with a noise like a whiplash.
One and a half seconds later, before anyone had time to react and move, there was the same hissing sound, followed by the venomous crack of high-velocity lead impacting on human skin and bone.
The third of Doc's personal guards had begun to turn, eyes raking the rows of startled faces, where heads were beginning to seek the source of the shots. But he was way too slow.
Doc, still ducking, noticed a different note as the third of the .38s struck home. Instead of the flat slap, there was a more muffled, pulpy noise. He glanced at the lean man as he fell, seeing that Mildred had shot him clean through the left eye, the bullet exploding the aqueous jelly from the socket, leaving a dark hole that leaked a little clear fluid.
