by James Axler
“No,” Ryan said. “Cast off and let the current carry us. Use the oars to fend off the bank or the bottom if we have to.”
They did and began to drift south down the Sippi. The angled stubs of the Arch showed gleams of the lights from Soulardville beyond. There were no sounds except the splash of rain in water and patter on skin and wood, and the changeless, ever-changing voice of the mighty river.
Then there was a commotion like an elephant with its tail on fire, not far north of where they had cast off from. They heard voices calling to one another.
“Mmm!” Emerald said urgently.
Krysty sighed. She handed her oar to Mildred. Ryan had the other, although for the moment they drifted a good fifteen feet from shore. Carefully she removed the hood, revealing the bulging cheeks and furious eyes of a triple-pissed girl.
Krysty drew her snub-nosed Smith & Wesson Model 640 and pointed it at the bridge of the captive’s nose. Emerald’s green eyes went saucer-wide.
“No sounds,” the redhead murmured. “Got that?”
Emerald nodded vigorously.
A quarter mile or so upstream somebody uttered a cry of triumph.
“Found where boat went in water,” Jak said.
The grass had been thick enough that no tracks would show, Ryan knew. But sliding a big boat up and down the bank crushed the grass in a swath so wide even wilderness-challenged types like the scavvies could never miss it, even in the dark. And the sweep of a pale yellow beam across the river surface showed they had lights, probably bull’s-eye lanterns such as the companions had observed them carrying before.
Their pursuers’ calls quickly turned to consternation and then frustrated fury.
“Fire up the mill,” Ryan called softly to Jak. The rain continued to fall, although not at so vigorous a pace. “It’s not loud. And even if they hear there’s not much they can do about it now.”
“Head across now?” Jak asked.
“No,” Ryan said. “Keep driving us along the shore. The scavvies got some scoped longblasters. If they spot us, one of them might get ideas.”
“Would they chance a shot hitting their friend the princess?”
“Depends on how much she told them of her family history, Doc,” Krysty said. Ryan couldn’t miss the note of sadness in her voice.
“Damn straight,” Mildred declared passionately. “If I was being carried off to be sacrificed to those awful things, I hope one of you would put a bullet through my cranium.”
That dampened the jubilant mood their successful escape had engendered in them worse than the rain. They putted along south at about twice the current’s speed. Before they reached the Martin Luther King bridge Ryan had Jak make for deeper water, farther from the bank.
They knew there’d been stickies around the east end of the bridge. Also Ryan was getting a prickly feeling along the back of his neck about keeping too close to shore, where anybody might nail one of them with an arrow or thrown rock, or even try jumping into the whaleboat from a low overhanging branch.
Just because they had Dan E. and his scavvies on their tail big-time now didn’t mean no one else would make a play for them. In the Deathlands night there were no friends.
Emerald sat amidships with Ryan’s coat around her shoulders. Her gag had been removed, but her hands were still tied. Her ankles had also been close-tied to thwart a leap overboard to freedom, which everybody suspected she’d do if given a half-chance, even if freedom only meant a quick inhalation to fill her lungs with water, and sink down where the most determined screamwing could never get at her….
She saw Ryan looking at her and shook her hair back defiantly. “You real proud of yourselves now?”
“No,” Ryan said. “So, what were you after over there with Dan E. and the scavvies, Princess? A power base to plot your return? A ticket out?”
“Friends,” she said. Suddenly she hung her head. “Just friends. I never had any growing up. I couldn’t. I was the baron’s daughter, and always had to remember how important I was. Although everybody was nice to me all the time. Like they had a choice!
“But Dan and his crew took me in. Treated me nice. Said as long as I pulled my weight and didn’t whine too much I was welcome aboard. They were my friends.”
A tear dropped from her eye. Ryan was actually torn between cry-me-a-river contempt for a spoiled little girl who thought she had it tough, to feeling a certain pang for her genuine depths of loneliness. That and the fact that, nuke dust, she did have it tough.
But then she snapped her head up. Her cheek was wet but her eyes blazed like green fire.
“You wouldn’t know anything about friends, would you?” she railed at him.
“Yes,” Krysty said. “He would.”
“They’ll never rest until they track you down!”
“Sweetheart,” Ryan said, “I’m counting on it.”
“So what did Bro Joe offer you, anyway?” she demanded. “Jack? Ammo? Meds? Some of his opium?”
“All those things,” Ryan said. “Plus one more—the life of one of our friends who got hurt and wound up in the care of your healer, Strode.”
“Strode? Is she still all right? What am I saying? Of course she would be. Joseph would never dare fuck with her. He’s a chickenshit at heart. The people love her too much to let him do anything to her. Anyway, he needs her and he knows it.”
“Needs her for what?” Mildred asked.
The girl uttered a wild laugh. “To rule the ville! Duh! He’s no good without a healer, even if he does have some kind of deal going on with King Screamwing like he says.”
“Some kind of deal,” Ryan said with a thin grin. “Yeah. That about sums it up.”
“You know Bro Joe arranged to have my daddy dosed with rad dust, right? I think it was his nasty little monkey Booker set the trap. Little prick’s a lot more nimble than he looks.”
“Reckoned as much,” Ryan said. “About your daddy, I mean.”
“You did?” The captive wasn’t the only one who looked surprised. So did his companions. All except Krysty, who sat right behind the girl. She gave him a little nod.
“So mebbe you know all that about Joseph wandering in the rubble and getting some kind of spirit vision where he walked with King Screamwing’s a load of dud rounds, huh?” Emerald said. “He’s got some means of controlling them. He can call ’em, and he can keep ’em away. How, I got no clue. But it’s true. I know it is. Screamwings’re nothing but a bunch of nasty mutie animals. Even that triple-big triple-bastard king. Although mebbe he is a bit smarter at that. Got a head on him like one of the Clydesdales they got at Breweryville.”
Slowly Ryan nodded. “Kind of worked that out, too.”
This time it was Krysty who said, “You did?”
“Yeah. Tell you later. Right now we need to keep eyes skinned. Got bridges coming up. Good place for trouble, if trouble wants to happen.”
Emerald was shaking her head. “I don’t get it,” she said. “You people actually seem like you got something in your skulls other than dried-up horse shit. So how come you’re so triple-stupe you don’t realize Bro Joe’s never gonna pay you? Except mebbe with a bullet in your heads. If he doesn’t feed you to those flying shitbird friends of his.”
To Ryan’s surprise it was Mildred who answered.
“Girl,” she said, “do we look to you like people who got a choice?”
The captive folded her arms beneath her bare breasts and scowled. “You always got a choice.”
“That’s just facile bullshit,” Mildred said.
“No,” Ryan said. “She’s right. There’s always a choice. You can always choose to die. Or you can choose to live and pay the freight. You can choose to break a deal and make your word worth nothing to anybody, or you can choose to keep a deal no matter how hard it runs or how deep it cuts. You can choose to run out on your hurt friend and leave him to his fate among enemies, or you can do whatever it takes to get him clear, even if in the end it means you all die. We know we
’ve got choices, Princess.
“And we know which ones we made. So, it sucks to be you. That’s a right damn shame. But it’s just how it is.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dawn was rising out of the tree-lined bluffs along the far bank and spreading like fog over the river when they pulled the boat in between two warehouses at the little makeshift landing not far from the Soulardville gate. When Madame Sallée whined about Soulard and Breweryville not allowing docks on account of moral pollution from the notorious east side, she either didn’t have her story or her facts quite straight. Even the crippled wrinklie Saga had mentioned that Soulardville traded with riverfolk, which meant they had to have a place to tie up. And more, someplace reliable where they could load and unload cargo.
The dock had been built, as far as Ryan could tell, out of rubble from fallen buildings and planks most likely salvaged from the river itself.
“It’s bigger than I expected,” Mildred remarked as they escorted Emerald from the whaleboat. Her arms remained tied behind her back. She was hobbled by a rope tied between her ankles that allowed no more than two feet of play, against a last-second break. And as they stood on the warped planking they tethered her wrists by a twelve-foot length of rope to Ryan’s waist. They were taking no chances on their prize using her demonstrated ingenuity to thwart them.
“They need to move some pretty substantial cargoes in and out of here,” Krysty said. She was helping unload the remaining backpacks. Ryan had shouldered his before cinching Emerald to him.
When Doc tried to place Ryan’s coat around the naked girl’s shoulders, she haughtily shrugged it off.
“I don’t want anything you bastards own touching me,” she said. “Let the people of Soulardville look all they want. I have nothing to hide, and nothing to be ashamed of.”
Once on the dock with packs on their backs the others looked at Ryan. “Let’s do it.”
“You sure you want to do this?” Mildred asked.
“I’m triple-sure I don’t,” Ryan said. “I’m also triple-sure this is the one and only shot we got for getting out of here with the Armorer and mebbe even all our parts.”
“I must admit, my dear Ryan,” Doc said, shaking his head, “that I fail to see any possible pathway that leads to such a salubrious resolution.”
Ryan grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “Then let’s hope the nuke-suckers in the ville won’t, either.”
They marched up the well-trod slope from the water to 7th Street. When the wide path swung left around an intact cinder-block building, they saw the main Soulardville gate scarcely a hundred yards away.
As they approached, the gate began to creak open to reveal Brother Joseph. Flanking him stood Garrison and the little wizened Booker. When he saw their prize, Booker did a little dance in place in monkey glee.
“Here’s your girl,” Ryan said.
At a fractional nod from Garrison, black-jerseyed sec men stepped in briskly to detach the rope from Ryan’s waist and secure the prisoner themselves. She didn’t deign to glance at them. She flung one last glare of emerald hate at Ryan, then stood with her head elevated and those deep green eyes staring at a point above the horizon.
“We brought what you asked for,” Ryan said. “Now it’s time we got paid.”
Bro Joe’s smile broadened. It was like the sun coming out from behind thunderclouds.
“Bend over, here it comes again,” Mildred muttered under her breath.
“Hush now,” Ryan said softly back.
“And you shall indeed receive what you have coming to you,” Brother Joseph said. “There is one unfortunate complication. I’m afraid that in your absence our beloved Baron Savij has died. You must, of course, be arrested and tried for daring to lay hands on the sacred person of his daughter, our new ruler.”
“So you finally found the balls to finish him off,” Emerald said. She spoke without heat or contempt or even sorrow. It was as if something she had long since known had happened had simply been confirmed.
Brother Joseph only smiled at her. Ryan noted the way his pale amber eyes seemed to caress every curve of her body.
The preacher looked at Ryan. “What? No protestations or complaints?”
“Why? Reckoned you’d backstab us.”
Brother Joseph frowned in what seemed genuine puzzlement. “Then why return at all?”
“We made a deal,” Ryan said simply. “Plus there’s the little matter of our pal, J.B.”
“Ah, yes. Well, you’ll soon be sharing his company. It appears he’s served his function.”
“No point delaying the inevitable,” Garrison said, as calm as always. “Haul it.”
His sec men marched their captives up the main street through growing dawnlight. Already there were a lot of people abroad, sprinkling water drawn from the communal wells on bright flowers in pots on their front porches, or heading off to their daily occupations. Heads turned and eyes widened. Excited whispers began to spread.
At the plaza the companions were steered left down the half block to their house of earlier confinement. Emerald, still haughty and unwilling to acknowledge the very existence of her captors, was led on to the palace, which was now, technically, hers.
The stains on the hateful tilted slab in the plaza’s center, he noted, were once again covered by its canvas shroud.
Inside the house it was already hot and still. Relieved as expected of their gear and weapons, the companions immediately went about opening all the windows to get the air circulating. As before, neither Doc’s sword stick nor Jak’s concealed knives were taken.
As before, it didn’t look as if it would make much difference.
As Ryan was pushing open a window in a top-floor bedroom, he heard a rattling from the front door. Since he was at the back of the house he couldn’t see who it was. He emerged and went down the stairs as Krysty opened the inner front door.
“J.B.!” she cried.
Ryan rushed down the last few steps to stand beside her. There indeed sat the Armorer himself in a wheelchair pushed by none other than Strode, more grim-faced even than usual. Though J.B. wore his trademark fedora tipped to a rakish angle, his head hung. His eyes were half-closed and his jaws slack. His facial skin was gray and seemed to hang loose on the underlying framework of jaw and cheek and brow. He looked like Death rolling. But it was him, and alive.
“You try to take the healer hostage,” said the sec man who’d unlocked the door, “you’re dead.”
“Young man, don’t be more of an idiot than you absolutely have to!” Strode snapped. “They won’t harm me. Their overactive senses of self-preservation assure that if nothing else.”
Glaring back at both the sec-men quartet and her own pair of anxious assistants, Strode muscled the wheelchair and its burden inside by herself. Ryan and Krysty obligingly stepped back. Neither offered to help. For a fact, the ville healer had forearms and shoulders like a dock worker from moving her patients over the years.
“You can shut the door, now,” she said with a fierce glare at Ryan. He obeyed.
J.B. shook his head, opened his eyes wide and grinned.
“How’d you like my death’s-door act? Had you going as well as those sec stupes, didn’t I?”
A dark missile flew across the well-scuffed hardwood floor. “J.B.!” Mildred yelled, enfolding him in her arms as she stood.
“Careful there, young woman! He’s still in need of substantial recuperation!”
“Keep your hammer lifted, healer,” Ryan said. “She knows what she’s doing. And believe me, you don’t care a spent casing more about the patient than she does.”
Strode glared like an angry buffalo bull about to charge for a couple heartbeats longer. Then the tension went out of her powerful neck and shoulders, which wasn’t the same as saying she relaxed.
“Very well,” she said. “Although it’s difficult for me to imagine any of you really caring about anything but yourselves!”
“Don’t mind her,” J.B. c
alled. “She’s not as mean as she lets on. Though, granted, she is as tough as hundred-year-old jerky.”
“If you don’t believe I’m as mean as I let on, young man,” Strode said, “I clearly didn’t give you enough enemas.”
“Sit down!” Mildred exclaimed when they broke their clinch and J.B. tried to step forward to greet his other comrades. “Sure, you’re better. But no way are you well!”
“Your friend is a tough customer himself,” the healer said. “And as with most people these days, a wound that doesn’t kill or cripple a person, a wound that can heal, usually does so fairly fast. Only the hardy survived the megacull top pass on their genes. For better or worse.”
“How do you feel, man?” Ryan asked, gripping J.B.’s forearm to forearm.
“The truth?” J.B. asked with a grin. “Like nuke death rollin’. Every breath is like somebody driving a railway spike through both lungs. But I’m fit to travel and fit to fight.”
“He exaggerates,” Strode said. “A typical masculine failing. Still, his determination to get back on his feet as soon as possible did aid the healing process, as any form of positive frame of mind will tend to. But as is often the case, it also rendered him less than ideally cooperative.”
“He’s a terrible patient,” Mildred agreed as Krysty came forward to give the Armorer a hug. The physician stood behind J.B.’s chair and massaged his left shoulder with her strong right hand, as if she couldn’t bear to break contact for even a moment.
Doc approached, his face wreathed in smiles. “Welcome back, our boon companion.”
Jak sort of sidled up to touch hands with J.B. “Good you back.”
“So you two seem to have cooked yourselves up a little conspiracy,” Ryan said.
“Let’s say we came to a meeting of the minds,” Strode said. “Your friend has a devious turn of thought.”
“Wouldn’t reckon a healer to have one,” Ryan said.
Strode’s laugh was so hearty it startled him. “You haven’t thought much about the art of healing then. Every good healer’s at least half mountebank. The best tend to be even more.”
