Way of the Wolf

by James Axler

"Ryan," J.B. called less than two minutes later.

  "Here." Ryan stepped in through the open door, noting the woman and the two men that flanked the Armorer, their hands on their weapons. "There's a lot of things we've got to talk over."

  DOC SAT on his haunches and watched the barn. The wag carrying Mildred had disappeared inside almost a half hour before. Cloaked in the shadows of a nearby residence, crouched behind some bushes, he kept his Le Mat blaster across his knees. He held the slim volume of Robert Frost poetry in his free hand, forcing himself to be patient by trying to recall all he could of the poet's work.

  He was torn between going back to Ryan and the others to let them know where Mildred had been taken, and not wanting to desert the woman.

  His mind conjured up torture scene after torture scene, refusing to give him any rest. Too many of the vulgar violences that traveled through his brain were too clear, too much a part of what he had lived through.

  Doc had witnessed the evil that lurked in the hearts of men. He stifled a burst of laughter that threatened to tear free inside him, not knowing what had sparked it.

  Voices warned him that men were coming back out of the barn.

  Doc drew back into the shadowy embrace of the hedges beside the house and curled his finger around the Le Mat's trigger. He had it set for the massive .63-caliber shotgun load. If all hell was going to break loose when he had to use it, he figured on clearing the decks as much as possible beforehand. Kirkland walked out of the barn in the company of two other men, all of them illuminated by the lantern the healer carried. One of them Doc recognized as being one of the men aboard the wag that had taken Mildred. Kirkland led the way into the back of a large manor house that showed evidence of skilled carpenters who had built it.

  When the men disappeared into the house, Doc waited a little while longer, then eased out of hiding and took long steps toward the barn. The door was left unlocked, so he crept inside.

  The stink of hay and the animals filled his nostrils as he passed inside. He used his cane much as a person without sight would, feeling for uneven surfaces ahead of him.

  With a dull thunk he found an object before him that turned out to be one of the wag wheels. He pocketed the Frost book and whispered hoarsely, "Mildred! Mildred! Dear lady, it is I, Doc. If you can hear me, please let me know." He searched frantically, feeling across the buckboard, sorely afraid that Mildred's corpse would be the only thing left lying there.

  Thankfully, in a sense, the buckboard was empty. That still left finding Mildred almost an impossibility. Doc prayed as he searched, hoping that the woman was still alive.

  A sliver of moonlight above him caught his attention as it threw a narrow shaft onto the stalls in front of him. It vanished a moment later, obviously having been reflected from some other surface outside. Still, it presented possibilities.

  Working from the brief glimpse he'd gotten, Doc found the ladder leading up to the hayloft and climbed it. When he gained the top, he used the sword stick again to search the area before him, making his way to the small doors fronting the barn. The moonlight rimmed them, drawing them into squares almost three feet across.

  When he reached the doors, he pulled the bolt back and opened them. Moonlight invaded the barn, falling down over the horses below. Most of the stalls contained animals. With the unaccustomed light invading the barn, some of the horses started nickering restlessly. Still, the natural light flooding the barn would be much less obvious than lighting a lantern.

  Doc climbed back down the ladder and rounded the buckboard. A quick check let him know that Mildred wasn't in any of the stalls. His mind flew, racing with possibilities. He glanced upward, seeing nothing but the hayloft above.

  He then moved to one side of the stall near the barn door and started stamping his foot. All he encountered for a long time was the dull splat of his boot striking nothing but hard ground.

  He was beginning to think that if there was an underground room, it was buried so deep that he wouldn't be able to hear the difference. Fearful disappointment filled him, and the madness seeped into every chink such negative thinking created.

  Then the sound changed when he stamped. Instead of a dulled thud, he heard a hollow thomp.

  Marking the area with the sword stick, Doc sprang for the pitchfork hanging on the wall near the tack and harness. Determined effort and some work allowed him to track the underground room to the rearmost stall on the right. The stall was empty, and straw covered the floor. Doc scraped the straw away and found the square-cut door beneath, collared by two-by-fours. He grasped the steel ring set in the door and yanked it open to reveal a yawning black abyss below.

  He felt inside and found a ladder built onto one of the walls. Voices outside startled him, coming closer.

  Quiet as he could be, Doc climbed inside the doorway and pulled it closed behind him. He waited for a moment, hardly daring to breathe.

  And the voices came closer. "I don't care what Kirkland says about that bitch," a man said. "Damaged goods isn't gonna keep her from being worth just as much to the bastard outlanders. I see Kirkland took a woman from the gaudy house tonight, so I know he isn't needing relief the way I do."

  "I don't know about that, Harold," another man said. "You go messing with that woman, Kirkland's liable to chill you over it."

  "Fuck him. I'll just tell him she's lying. I don't think he's going to be handing her back to those outlanders alive anyway. Never saw him be overly generous about such things, and they got something he wants or he would have killed them outright anyhow."

  Doc explored the floor below him. The sword stick quickly touched walls on all sides of him, letting him know he was in a very small room. Kneeling, he dragged his free hand across the floor, spreading out his fingers so he could cover more ground. He found another steel ring and pulled it up.

  The footsteps coming from above continued their approach, growing louder.

  Doc took the second ladder down, sensing movement too late above him. And below him was the sound of breaking glass.

  AGAINST THE SHELVES now, Mildred shoved hard. Her shoulder met a gallon jar with considerable force. The jar rocked across the shelf and collided with another from the sound of the breaking glass. Liquid ran down her arm.

  Twisting in her chair, Mildred let the liquid run onto her other arm, drenching her wrist where the leather thong had grown more loose. She knew leather also stretched when it got wet. The water that had been dumped on her earlier had probably loosened the thong as much as it had.

  The liquid—brine, from the smell of it—thoroughly soaked the thongs holding both wrists as bits and pieces of vegetables slid across her fingers. She pulled against her restraints, finally able to get her hands free.

  Then she felt along the floor for a chunk of glass to use on the thongs binding her ankles. She found a piece only a few inches long that had razor-sharp edges. While she was picking it up, she accidentally sliced her thumb. The brine burned the cut, but she ignored the pain while she cut herself free.

  A muted banging noise sounded above her where she judged the trapdoor to be. In the darkness it was hard to tell, hard to remember. Using both hands now, she gently searched through the glass fragments until she found a bigger one that she could use as a weapon.

  She dragged her knuckles across it, keeping the softer parts of her hands protected from the edges. The piece she held was nearly eight inches long.

  The banging from above repeated, louder this time. Men's voices also drifted into the room.

  Mildred ripped a shirtsleeve free, then wrapped it around the bottom four inches or so of the glass shard she'd picked up. The cloth wrapped around enough times that the glass didn't immediately slash through. She fisted it, feeling somewhat better for having it.

  The glass shard wasn't much of a weapon, but she could make do.

  The trapdoor opened. More darkness greeted her, this slightly more gray than the shadows filling the underground room. She didn't know why the man entering the
room wasn't carrying a lantern.

  Reaching out, she touched the ladder, making sure of the distance. Then she tightened her grip on the glass shard and waited.

  The footsteps continued coming down the ladder for another few rungs, then halted. "Mildred?" whispered a voice she recognized.

  Positioned behind the old man, Mildred halted her blow just in time. She'd intended to slash across whoever was hanging from the ladder. Legs or back, the wounds would have given her an edge.

  "Doc?" Mildred whispered back.

  "It is I, dear lady, come to your rescue I had thought. But I fear we are not going to be alone for much longer."

  Without warning, light appeared around the edges of a second door above Doc. The weak yellow illumination flared down through the sides of a second trapdoor above the one Doc was halfway through.

  "Somebody's been here, Harold," a man said in a quiet voice that barely got through the muffling effects of the trapdoor. "All the straw's been moved."

  "I can see that, Miner. Get that lantern over here and let's take a look before we get anybody else."

  "Betwixt a hard place and a rock," Doc whispered, "that's surely where we find ourselves in this quandary."

  "Haul your bony butt down off that ladder," Mildred ordered. "All you're doing up there is making a fine target."

  Doc clambered down.

  The shadows drew back as the light from the lantern above filtered into the room. Dust particles raced like wild comets through the haze drifting through the trapdoor above.

  "Your blaster, Doc," Mildred prompted. "That scattergun of yours is good in close quarters. And those bastards aren't going to have many places to run." She hung on to her anger, using it to force her fear away.

  Doc's Le Mat clicked as he made the adjustments necessary to swivel the shotgun barrel into the active role. "Stand back, dear Dr. Wyeth, because those concrete walls are going to be just as hard on us as they are on them."

  Then the trapdoor above opened.

  Pulled back against the wall, Mildred suddenly went deaf and blind as the Le Mat discharged. Shotgun pellets bounced wildly, and men started to scream.

  Chapter Fifteen

  "Jak and Dean have got horses rounded up and waiting for us just outside of Hazard," Ryan said to J.B. He sat at the table in the back of the gun shop. "If we make it that far, we can get out of here with a whole skin."

  "Sounds to me like your skin is the only one you're worried about."

  Ryan looked at the woman, remembering her name with effort. "Anna, my skin and those of my friends are the only ones I ever worry about."

  From the looks on the faces of Tinker Phillips and his sons, Ryan's views didn't sit well.

  "If it hadn't been for us," Anna protested, "you bastards wouldn't have been outfitted as well as you're going to be."

  Ryan knew that was true. J.B. had already shown him the ammo that Phillips had contributed to the cause. He fixed the woman with his hard stare. "Just because I'm making plans to take care of my people doesn't mean I'm leaving you out in the open with a busted wheel. You expect somebody to come riding into this town like some kind of vid hero and chill Kirkland?"

  "Been nights I dreamed of nothing else, mister," one of the men commented.

  Ryan shook his head. "You people have been cooped up in this retreat too long. I just chilled two men to get in here and talk to J.B. Kirkland's going to know about it, and he's going to know pretty much who did it. I don't see him letting us walk away after that."

  "And he has Mildred," J.B. put in. "Kind of makes everything personal," He cleaned his glasses and put them back on, the steel rims hard and shiny. "We aren't going to leave without her."

  "We're going to take Kirkland on," Ryan said, "because we don't have a choice. If we chill him, that's fine, but it's going to be because it happened, not because we planned on it."

  Anna sat back from the table. Her right hand was below the table, out of sight.

  Ryan didn't doubt for a moment that the woman had a blaster on him, just as he knew J.B. had her covered while he sat beside her. "If you people want your freedom—or this ville as your own—that's up to you. Fireblast! You're still going to have to go through Kirkland's sec team to do it."

  "Man's right," Phillips said. "It isn't his fight. Never was. Never will be." He massaged his hump. "How do you plan on getting the woman back?"

  Ryan swiveled his gaze to the old gunsmith. "I'm going to have to take a hand in Kirkland's game. If we try to run, I don't see that we're going to get past his sec team without getting run to ground. Even with horses."

  "So what do you have in mind?"

  "Make him bring his sec force back into the ville to contain an insurrection," Ryan answered. "Provided you can persuade a few people to join up."

  Phillips shook his head. "Don't see how that's possible. There's the plague to consider."

  "The plague's a damn lie," Ryan growled.

  "I got your word on that," Phillips said, "and I'm mostly willing to believe you. But those people out there, they've seen plague victims come in for a few years. They believe. Give me a week or so, mebbe I could make believers out of them. But not in one night. And we've only got half of that left."

  Ryan pushed up from the table. "I don't aim to wait, Tinker. Kirkland's going to shove it right up to the line in the morning, and I'm not going to back down from him. You want to make a difference, you'll be ready to take a stand, too."

  Phillips shook his head. "Got to think about that."

  "You do that," Ryan said. "I've got to get back to my people. J.B.?"

  "I'll be along in a bit. Another hour or two, and I'll have enough shotgun loads for the M-4000 to last for a while." He looked up at Ryan. "If you hear anything about Mildred—"

  "I'll come myself," Ryan promised.

  "You going looking?"

  "If Doc comes up with something we can work on."

  "You'll let me know?"

  "Any way it goes, you'll be the next man I tell," Ryan answered. He took his leave from the gun shop, feeling the heat of the woman's angered gaze.

  In a way she was right. He was thinking only of his own skin. And knowing that didn't feel comfortable.

  He walked out onto the boardwalk, making certain the dead deputy across the street hadn't been replaced. There was a time when he rode with the Trader on War Wag One he might have taken a firmer stance in Hazard. The Trader wouldn't have put up with what was going on in the ville.

  Any way it went down in the morning—if things saw fit to wait that long—there would be more than a few people catching the last train to the coast.

  DOC MANAGED the recoil from the Le Mat with a little trouble. He'd squeezed off the shot before he was truly ready, and there had been the matter of footing. Still he readied another blast as the echoes of the first slammed against his eardrums in the tight confines of the room.

  One of the two men broke away from the second trapdoor above, screaming hoarsely that he was hit and bleeding badly. The second man shoved the snout of a revolver into the hole and squeezed off rounds as fast as he could.

  Doc dodged back, feeling one of the bullets yank at his coattails, creating another mending job for a time when things were decidedly calmer.

  The pistol bullets bounced and whined from the walls a few times before expending the energy that propelled them. Glass containers broke, spilling smells and foodstuffs to the floor. The light trickling down from above was barely enough to let Doc see Mildred taking cover across the room.

  Knowing they didn't have time to spend exchanging shots with the men up above, Doc glanced upward and saw the man above shoving his arm into the trapdoor area again. The old man brought up the Le Mat and pushed it into the mouth of the bottom trapdoor. He dropped the hammer on the round, aiming for the wall, unable to fire at the gunner without exposing himself.

  The double-aught shot bounced off the wall and smashed into the gunner's arm. He wailed in pain.

  Doc readied another
load into the Le Mat. "Are you ready, Dr. Wyeth?" He had to shout to even hear himself.

  "Yes," Mildred roared back.

  "Then follow me, and pray that the Almighty continues to look after fools." Doc grabbed the ladder and bounded up the rungs. He kept the Le Mat in one fist, managing the climb with the other.

  Up above, the second trapdoor remained open and free of gunmen.

  At the top of the ladder, Doc made his way to the second trapdoor and climbed onward. He stayed low when he climbed out at the barn floor level again.

  One of Kirkland's men lay to one side, sightless eyes staring at the ceiling. His chest was a bloody ruin where the initial double-aught charge had caught him.

  Doc paused, hunkered down and cut his eyes around the barn. His hearing was still hampered from all the crash and din that had been released in the underground room. Then he spotted the fleet-footed shadow speeding toward the barn doors. He lifted the Le Mat and fired again.

  The shotgun charge caught the man in the back and hurtled him forward, sprawling him out almost within reaching distance of the doors.

  Doc turned and offered his hand to Mildred as she climbed out of the trapdoor. "My hand, dear lady, while I have the strength in me to help."

  Mildred grabbed his hand and scrambled out of the hole. "Now what?"

  Doc raised his eyebrows. "You propose that I had an actual plan in all of this?"

  "Would have been a great help, Doc." Mildred stripped the blaster from the corpse and started moving toward the tack and equipment area.

  "I had thought of taking the horses," Doc admitted, "but I was uncertain what shape you might be in."

  "I'm all for getting the hell out of here." Mildred took a pair of bridles from the wall and tossed one to Doc. "Everybody else Kirkland has at this place is going to be all over us like flies on shit."

  "Those," Doc assured Mildred as he crossed the stable area to one of the horses, "are my sentiments exactly." He thrust the Le Mat into his belt, then grabbed the mane of the horse in the stall beside him.

  The animal tossed its head a few times, but came into the bridle easily enough. Despite the ringing in his ears, Doc thought he could hear men yelling outside. He forced the bit between the horse's teeth, then fit the bridle strap behind the horse's ears.