No Man's Land

by James Axler

  “These are the folks we brought in last night,” the young officer said. If he saw anything unusual at so superior an officer—the boss of the whole nuking army—addressing him with such familiarity, he showed no sign of it. Not even the prissy Cody showed visible offense, meaning it was either the custom among the Uplanders, or their general’s custom, so ingrained he’d given up getting his skivvies in a wad over it. “The ones who brought in the fine cavalry mounts from the Association herd. They say they want to join up.”

  Al ran his gaze across them appraisingly. His eyes were a startling blue beneath beetling black brows.

  “Ladies,” he said at length. “Gentlemen. I trust you’ll forgive my manners, which are execrable. That being stated and taken for granted, I will be moved to say that you are a mighty unlikely-looking assortment of blasters-for-hire. And that you have among you a fine-looking pair of fillies, blessed with abundant and indeed overflowing racks.”

  Had Ryan been the sort to take offense at another man overtly appreciating his mate Krysty—as he was not, no more than he was about a man giving the eye to Mildred—the gleam in Al’s eye would still have drawn some of the sting. And the way the baron’s words made Cody turn bright purple and sputter in wordless indignation would’ve excused a wide variety of behaviors.

  Anyway, Krysty caught Al’s eye and grinned back. “Thank you kindly, Baron,” she said.

  Ryan glanced aside at J.B., who shrugged. Krysty was her own women and all, but Ryan was tempted to remind her of the risks entailed in liking a baron. Except he found himself more inclined that way than harsh experience would dictate, as well.

  “I’m Ryan Cawdor,” he said. “These are my friends.” He introduced them in turn.

  “We may not look like much, General,” Doc said when the intros were performed. “But our very unprepossessing appearances can lead foes to underestimate us. As I believe your opposite number discovered to his sorrow last night.”

  A cloud seemed to cross Al’s big rugged features at that. “Speaking of which,” he said, with his beard sunk to his breastbone, “it seems I heard tell this morning that you killed Jed’s boy Buddy.”

  “If we might say a word in our defense, General?” Krysty said.

  He looked at her. “If you ladies want to sign on to shoot Protectors,” he said, “I’ll gladly pay you do to it. But if your men are the sort to hide behind your skirts—metaphorically speaking, of course—”

  “What Krysty means, General,” Mildred said, “is our defense. Hers and mine. We were the ones who killed Buddy Kylie. We were tied-up captives in a storage tent. Buddy came in and tried to rape us. It was a bad misjudgment on his part all the way around. We managed to get free and it ended up that Buddy wouldn’t ever get a chance to repeat the kind of acts he was bragging about on another woman.”

  Al’s brows went up, giving a washboard appearance to his tall forehead. “That surely does put an entirely different complexion on the matter,” he said. “My apologies, ladies. I had heard rumors to that effect—about that boisterous young man’s behavior—but never entirely gave them credence. What he attempted to do to you was unconscionable. Your response was altogether justified, and leaves this dirty old world a slightly cleaner place. So—” he swept them all with that penetrating gaze once more “—it appears I may have indeed underestimated the lot of you. Now, I understand that along with those fine smokeless-powder handblasters you carry, you brought some impressive longer arms with you, as well.”

  “Which we should allocate to the appropriate individuals, General,” the colonel said. By which Ryan just knew he meant the well-born ones. “This ragged lot can enlist as common troops along with the rest. The females can serve as healers, perhaps, if they have the talent. Otherwise we can use cooks and washerwomen.”

  “That very notion led to our disagreements with Baron Jed,” J.B. said softly. He always spoke mildly, seldom if ever raising his voice. From the look Al gave him the general wasn’t stupe enough to think that made the little man soft.

  “They got advanced blasters,” Al said, “and on the evidence they know how to use them. If they got their own ammo to burn, I don’t see the sense in handing them charcoal-burners and wasting them on the line with the regular troops.”

  “I believe you’re heading down the same path we are, Baron,” Ryan said. “We can serve you best acting as a unit ourselves, which we’re accustomed to doing. Small-unit stuff. Hit and run. Carrying out raids and reconnaissance, targeted to do the enemy the most damage.”

  Al smiled. It was a big wide smile that overtook his whole vast and homely face. Still and all, it wasn’t an altogether pleasant expression, as Ryan suspected his own smile wasn’t.

  “Come over here and look at this confounded map, my friends,” Al said, beckoning with a vast paw, “and tell me what you can do for the Uplands Alliance. I got a feeling I’m gonna enjoy this.”

  “Reckon you will at that, general,” J.B. said. “I reckon you will.”

  * * *

  THE LITTLE WIRY MAN with the face like a wrung-out gaudy-bar rag and a shock of hair like sandy ash was ranting to a half dozen or so acolytes in spiffy blue uniforms when one of them finally noticed someone new had slipped into the Protector army headquarters tent unannounced.

  It was a young dude in a hat with a pheasant-tail feather stuck in the band, of all the ridiculous things. He spun around, fumbling at the holster flap that protected his six-shooter—mostly from himself, apparently—with a hand encased in a buckskin gauntlet.

  Snake Eye showed him his nice, even, white teeth. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, son,” he said.

  The kid’s fever-bright green eyes never left Snake Eye’s lone orb. Sweat broke out on his forehead. The yellow gauntlet moved away from the heavy leather holster flap. He took a step back into a group of other obviously young aides and tried visibly to become invisible.

  “How the name of a buffalo-fucking whore did you get in here?” the baron demanded, leaning forward and clutching the arms of what was a bit too grand to be called a camp chair. More like a throne, Snake Eye thought, amused.

  “Skill,” he said.

  The man who stood at Jed’s left elbow snapped, “How dare you come into the baron’s presence uninvited, bearing arms?”

  He was a sawed-off little stick himself, as pale as a day-old chill and as dry and shrunken-looking as if he were halfway to mummification. The only hint of color to his face was the scar that ran down the length of its right side, which was a blue a couple shades lighter than his spotless uniform blouse. It was obvious what he was; and his eyes were as black as his sec-boss soul.

  “If I wanted to chill the baron,” Snake Eye said amiably, “he’d be staring up at the tent roof this moment, wouldn’t he?”

  “What do you want, barging in here like this?” Jed demanded. Curiosity seemed to have overwhelmed outraged fury. For the moment at least.

  Time to pour some gas on the embers, Snake Eye thought with frank amusement.

  “First off, I no doubt should mention that I just chilled your Colonel Erl Kendry. Not that his loss should be keenly felt.”

  The obvious sec boss stared at him. His face, which had purpled with fury when the mercie announced himself, went white, as if a mask had fallen away. That meant he had gone from being nuke-red mad to fixing to do something about it.

  Keeping his gaze locked on Jed, Snake Eye nonetheless kept his eye at soft focus. If his peripheral vision, which was triple-fine, caught any sign the sec boss was preparing to order his men to kill the intruder Snake Eye would drop him instantly.

  He would count on the confusion that would produce among the stupe’s blue-coated bully boys to buy him the time he needed to do whatever needed done. As he would count still further upon the proved principle that it is indeed easier to get forgiveness than permission.

  The sec boss’s mouth, which had no more lip than Snake Eye knew his own to have, compressed. He read the mercie’s intent loud and clear.<
br />
  He turned. “You should order this impertinent piece of filth torn apart between horses, General.”

  Snake Eye smiled. “Feel free to try, gentlemen.”

  Jed waved his sec boss off as he would a mosquito whose whine had begun to irritate him.

  “That’s enough, Colonel Toth.” He fixed his eyes on Snake Eye, and his forehead rumpled even further into a frown.

  “I admit you got me curious. What the fuck do you want, outlander? And what in the name of glowing night shit possessed you to barge in here to announce the murder of a member of my general staff?”

  “Who happens to be a highly important man in the Association,” added Colonel Toth, who was obviously not easy to squelch.

  “Happened,” Snake Eye corrected. He decided the scar-faced man had to be better at his job than he appeared to be, for his baron and general to put up with him. Or perhaps just that much better than whomever Jed could find to replace him. Thinking on it, he considered the latter the far more likely possibility.

  “Allow me to introduce myself,” he continued. “I’m Snake Eye.”

  “That’s the name your mother gave you?” Jed asked.

  “That’s irrelevant. It is the name by which I am known as the premier assassin in the Deathlands. I understand you have chilling work you want done—targeted retribution against those who have done you and your flesh-and-blood wrong.”

  He smiled.

  “Consider my little announcement presentation of my bona fides.”

  “Ridiculous!” Toth exclaimed. “Intolerable!” Or so Snake Eye guessed that’s what the man had said, anyway; the man was sputtering like an engine with water in the fuel line, so he was hard to make out.

  Jed made a chopping gesture with the edge of his hand. “Oh, bullshit, Bismuth,” he said. “It’s not as if that fat nitwit Big Erl is any big loss. He mostly was a device for turning huge amounts of food into flab and gas.”

  He leaned forward on his throne. His eyes glittered like polished shards of glass from a predark beer bottle.

  “This job could use a man with skill and balls,” he said. “Since nobody’s shown a hint of having enough of either to track down the cowardly coldhearts who killed Buddy and bring them back here to face my righteous wrath.”

  Snake Eye reckoned he ought give the man his props for having the presence of mind to speechify for the benefit of his hangers-on even in the grip of such apparent passion.

  “I’m your man, Baron,” Snake Eye said.

  “Fair enough,” Jed said. “Get the fuckers who killed my boy!”

  “Do you know the miscreants’ names, Baron?”

  Jed settled back in his chair with a look of something like wild glee on his narrow rumpled features.

  “Like they were tattooed on the inside of my eyelids,” he said. “A man named Ryan Cawdor, his whores and cohorts.”

  “Ryan Cawdor?” Snake Eye said. “Long drink of water, lean as an old gray wolf, shaggy black hair and a lone eye as blue as mine is yellow? Travels with five friends?”

  Jed frowned. “You know him?”

  “Let’s say I know of him,” Snake Eye said. “He enjoys a certain...reputation in the circles I run in, Your Excellency. My professional fraternity, if you catch my drift.”

  Toth utter a crow-caw laugh. “Well, you’re wrong about one thing, mercie,” he said. “This coldheart has six worthless bastards trailing the tails of that long coat of his, not five.”

  Snake Eye raised a brow. “He must’ve added a new member to his pack,” he said. “Interesting. So, he had with him a big strapping redhead with tits to here, a somewhat shorter black woman, a gangly white-hair, a sawed-off runt in a hat and spectacles, and a young albino of slight stature?”

  “A what?”

  “Albino,” Snake Eye repeated. “Someone born without pigment in skin, hair and eyes. People commonly mistake them for mutants.”

  “Anyway,” the baron said, “the fucker had one more coldheart running with him. Just a kid, not much bigger than the...albino. Looked like a Mex.”

  “Interesting,” Snake Eye said. “His son used to run with him, then up and disappeared. Cawdor’s particular about those he lets tag along with him. Well, so that’s seven targets, rather than six. Sweetens the pot, I should say. Wouldn’t you, Baron?”

  “I’ll pay whatever price you ask,” Jed rasped, his face now suggesting an open wound, “if you get them and bring them back. But the one-eyed bastard and his two bitches—they have to be alive.”

  Snake Eye nodded. “And so they shall be, Baron,” he said. “But understand—you don’t bring down a man like Cawdor cheaply. To say nothing of his pack. A formidable bunch, all told.”

  “If he’s so nuke hot,” Toth said with a sneer, “what makes you think you can bring him and his mongrels down, mutie?”

  “Because while Cawdor’s good,” Snake Eye said, “I’m the best. I’m the fastest blaster in the Deathlands, far faster than any man. And I always carry out a contract.”

  From an inside pocket of his long black duster he drew a black cheroot, flicked a match alive on the talon of his thumb and lit up.

  “Now,” he said, puffing blue smoke, “if you’ll kindly order up one of your lackeys to bring your new partner in righteous retribution a chair and something fit to drink, Baron, let’s talk us some turkey, shall we?”

  Chapter Eight

  A pair of big dust-colored oxen nodded long-horned heads as they strained into the padded yokes that pulled the covered wag. Riding just out in front was a serious-looking trooper in a blue tunic and a black hat, holding a Winchester-style lever-action carbine in a gloved hand. Ricky had no way to tell whether it was loaded with black powder—the preferred propellant for both these Protectors and their Uplander rivals—or smokeless, like the blaster he and his friends carried. It was rare enough to see a longblaster in either camp that wasn’t single-shot, and indicated better than the young soldier’s fierce and self-important expression that the cargo the five wags carried was worth protecting.

  Ricky, lying on his belly on the cool earth, watched the convoy’s slow progress through the open sights of his fat-barreled carbine. The nearer pair of outriders came so close he could have made a good shot of hitting one with a thrown rock...no more than twenty yards away.

  But the blue-bloused riders never glanced his way.

  The day was bright, the sky blue, brushed with a few purple chem clouds. Their new pals in the Uplander Army told them real Deathlands orange skies and acid rainstorms were rare in these parts, this time of year; they tended to hit more in late summer and autumn. It was a cool day despite the bright light of the sun shining down from halfway to zenith.

  The wag convoy rolled along a rutted dirt road that ran down the middle of a wide flat-looking expanse set among stretches of rolling country, a few miles west of the Des Moines River. The river was fairly wide here but not deep enough to be navigable by boats carrying much cargo, which was why both sides depended largely on land resupply.

  But the “flat-looking” part was a cruel deception. It seemed to offer no more cover to Ricky’s eye than his poor mother’s dinner table did. But he’d spent his whole sixteen years of life on the island of Puerto Rico, which was mostly mountainous.

  The landscape, already showing many signs of greenery despite the fact this morning’s breeze bit through Ricky’s light scabbied windbreaker with winter’s teeth, in fact broken by many hummocks, folds and clumps of vegetation. No matter how unimpressive the area looked, it offered an impressive quantity of what Ryan called “dead ground,” spots too low to be covered in the field of vision even of a person on horseback.

  Jak, at first his bitter rival and now his increasingly inseparable friend, had installed him in his current hiding spot behind a bush of some sort that was beginning to bud out, its base, as well as him and his carbine, concealed by long windblown tan grass.

  Watching over his open sights, waiting, Ricky felt a twinge. It wasn’t as if he owe
d a duty to the bluecoats. They had treated them badly, stolen their stuff and tried to make them soldier slaves in the ranks, fresh meat for the Uplanders’ black-powder cannon. And, of course, there was still what their commanding general’s son, Buddy, tried to do to Krysty and Mildred.

  But he didn’t have anything personal against this young soldier, nor the trooper in the grimy-looking long-john shirt with the blue rag tied around the arm and the pair of baggy blue canvas pants, who sat on the board beside the driver of the lead-covered wag cradling a short double-barreled scattergun. Nor the other gun-riders in the five-wag convoy.

  He did owe a duty to his friends, and to his lost sister, Yamile. He needed to stay alive long enough—somehow, against all odds—to cross her trail and free her from the unknown mainlander to whom El Guapo had sold her.

  The trail rider came abreast. Ricky tried hard not to see the details of the gray-stubbled jowly face of the Protector cavalryman as he lined the top post of his front sight up on the right ear, just below the black slouch hat. He had already gulped a deep breath, trying not to make a gasping sound that would give away his position.

  Then he let out half the breath, steadied himself and squeezed the trigger.

  The steel butt-plate of the replica DeLisle carbine kicked his right shoulder with authority. He worked the bolt quickly as he brought the weapon back down.

  The only sound that came to his ears above the sighing breeze, the creak of harness and wag wheels, the groan of bearings and the plop-plop of slow hoof beats, was the thump of the bullet striking on target, just behind the trooper’s right ear. The man slumped down and out of the saddle, chilled instantly by a 230-grain .45-caliber ball to the brainpan.

  Forgive me, Ricky thought. But he believed even more strongly in duty than he did in mercy. As he mentally whispered the prayer to the dead man’s spirit, he was already lining up his next victim.

  The rear rider of the pair of mounted escorts on the far side of the wag convoy was a much younger man, not so very much older than Ricky and his new hermano Jak, perhaps. He had long blond hair, which was a very pronounced yellow in the sunlight although fairly stringy, almost obscuring his right ear and neck. He was also a much longer shot, closer to fifty yards away than forty and moving, if slowly, over not so even ground.