No Man's Land

by James Axler

  Ryan showed him a quick, tight-lipped smile. Just a flash. Kid, he thought, you’ve got a lot to learn about people. The feeling of knowing a secret nobody else does is one of the most powerful forces in the universe inside our heads and bellies. The gnawing thought that it’s not really any fun unless somebody else knows it, too, was right up near second place. Especially when you spend enough dark nights with only the thoughts in your head and a couple of donkeys for company.

  Old Pete shook his head. “Can’t tell you how many days since that one I wished I’d at least grabbed something. Have something to show for it. Some evidence it wasn’t all some kinda triple-crazy fever dream. But then—”

  The man shrugged. He seemed to be talking to the fire now, rather than his newfound friends.

  “Then I likely would’ve rotted away to a skeleton long since if I had. Because something in the back of my mind made me go outside to check. And I heard, plain as day, the shouts of some kinda patrol riding into the little ghost ville, Heartbreak, it’s called.

  “Never knew which side they belonged to—greenbacks or bluebellies. Only caught a glimpse of them before my donkeys and I hightailed it outta there. They was wearing just normal clothes, not uniforms, and I couldn’t make out no armbands. Not that it mattered even a teeny tiny bit. Even if they was deserters, which for all I know they could’a been. Whoever and whatever, they’d have been only too happy to chill an old coot and steal all that gorgeous old-days scabbie for themselves!”

  He took another drink and shuddered. Since the awful throat-searing booze had no visible effect on him, Ryan guessed that was memory at work.

  “Was away from here, when peace broke out last autumn,” Old Pete went on. “Out a ways west, tryin’ my luck in a less risky locale. Because for someone like me, just pure old-fashioned coldhearts are safer to deal with than armies. You can always tell what coldhearts’ll do. Not so with armies. They can be your best friend one moment, and lookin’ to see the color of your insides the next.

  “Time I got back, the rad-blasted war was on again like it had never so much as paused for breath. Not so much shooting and stabbing as such...never is. But all the time, patrollin’, patrollin’, patrollin’, looking for the least advantage over t’other side, mebbe ambush their opposite numbers if they hit a strike. Even less chance than before to go back and grab some of that hidden treasure.”

  He upended the jug, shook it over his mouth, upturned open like a hungry baby bird’s.

  A single drop of clear liquid, glittering in the firelight, fell into his waiting mouth. Old Pete swallowed as if it were the size of a goose egg, then cast the jug into the night.

  “Now, though, I’m just hanging around biding my time. Reckon things’ll settle down for spell, after that there beating the greenies laid on the blues a few days back. Both sides are played out—ever’body knows that. Their barons most of all.

  “So this go-round, I calculate, they’ll have to make peace. Won’t stick any more than the last one did, of course. Uplanders and Protectors just fight natural, like jays and hawks. But they both need ’em a good blow before they puff their chests up for another go at each other.”

  Without more rotgut to suppress his better judgment his blue eyes unclouded, ever so slightly. His white eyebrows bristled more than usual and he frowned in thought.

  “And no, I reckon I’m a garrulous old fool,” he said, “and run my mouth off more than is good for me. Just a bunch’a old-man crazy talk, my friends. Nothin’ to it.”

  He blew his whiskers out in a sigh.

  “Oh, well. Either I’ll wake up come morning with a second smile beneath my beard, or I won’t. Not so sure what difference that even makes me, anymore....”

  Old Pete’s words ran down like a clock that needed winding. His chin dropped to his chest. He began to snore softly.

  Several minutes passed. Out on the grasslands around them a litter of coyote pups clamored for attention until their mother shut them up with a sharp yip. Ricky looked around as if wondering what signal that was. But this time he noticed right off none of the others was reacting. It wasn’t White Wolf, as Jak had been known in the bayous in his guerrilla days, but a canine of a different color.

  Ryan smiled. The boy learned fast.

  “Breathing’s as regular as clockwork,” Mildred said at last. “If he’s faking it, he’s too good for me.”

  “Thoughts?” Ryan asked softly.

  “Not a lot to go on,” Mildred said. “I suppose we could rouse the old geezer and try to get more out of him. This Heartbreak ville could be anywhere around here.”

  “On the contrary, dear lady,” Doc said. In contrast to the other oldie—and his own too-frequent self—his pale blue eyes were bright, and he leaned forward keenly. He was on the hunt intellectually, Ryan knew. And that always stimulated him. “I believe we have ample data to go on. Do we not?”

  “We know the redoubt’s hidden in what was no-man’s-land before we helped Baron Al redraw his lines,” Ryan said. “We know its entry is underground, in some deserted ville called Heartbreak.”

  “We’ve been all over this country the past few weeks, lover,” Krysty said. “There’s a lot of deserted villes.”

  Apparently as the currents of the war ebbed and flowed over decades, settlements had sprung up, been abandoned, some resettled, some not, as new ones came into being. They’d found clumps of derelict buildings dotting the grasslands, some just a couple of shacks, some big enough to have possessed a street or two, all in states ranging from relatively intact to just a few rotting-away planks or stones sticking up above mounds in the grass.

  It was testimony both to the relatively rich nature of this country, and the abiding nature of the conflict being waged over it.

  “We could squeeze more info out of him,” Mildred said with obvious reluctance, “since we’re all out of liquid encouragement.”

  “Ryan’s right,” J.B. said. “Reckon we got enough and more to go on. Don’t need more of his addled memories to help us find what we’re looking for. If he’s not just hallucinating, or making the whole thing up to entertain us and himself.”

  Ryan shook his head. “It doesn’t smell that way to me,” he said. “We keep hearing rumors about the place. This strikes me as a solid a lead as we could ask for. Plus we can keep hunting while doing our jobs for the Alliance.”

  He stood up. “I’m hitting the sack,” he said.

  “Are we really so eager to jump out of here, lover?” Krysty asked softly.

  “What do you mean?” Ryan asked.

  “We’ve got a gig,” she said. “Right now, it’s pretty easy. Sniping at the Protectors and picking off the odd supply wag isn’t much more hazardous than just living day-to-day is normally. If any. Things seem to have settled down. Old Pete’s right. Both sides need to make peace and make it last, a year at least, mebbe more.”

  “If they make peace,” J.B. said, “Al’s not so likely to want to pay us to shoot at the lowlanders, though.”

  “There’re other ways to live, J.B.,” Mildred said with a curious light in her dark brown eyes.

  “Baron Al’s as much as said as we could have a nice homestead right now,” Krysty said. “Not as if there’s plenty whose owners got no more call to use them. We could try, you know. Settling down. For a spell.”

  “You really want to live like a baron?” Ryan asked. “Lord it over the farmers like they do?”

  “We don’t have to act the same way they do, Ryan,” she said. “We don’t, anyway.”

  “Even in my time,” Doc said thoughtfully, “the warning was most ancient, not to rely on the gratitude of princes.” He looked up. “Does experience teach us that barons are any more reliable?”

  “But Al’s a good man,” Krysty protested. “He’s not like most barons. We all know it. Don’t we, Ryan?”

  Ryan knew how the dream of settling down, finding peace and security, was important to his lover. He hated pouring cold water on it when it flared into flam
e.

  “He is,” Ryan said. “That’s a rare thing, we all know that. He seems square.”

  “But...” J.B. said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah. Times change. Things change. Right now Al’s riding on top of the world, as far as the Alliance is concerned. Fireblast, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s a sight more popular in the Association territories than their own boss baron is right now. And not just only among the common folk.

  “But he’s a war chief. That’s a temporary gig. He talks about that himself often enough, we’ve all heard him. He says he’s looking forward to nothing more than just being the baron of Siebertville. He’s never shown me a reason to doubt he means that.

  “And both sides got more barons than just the one. Right now you got to think Jed’s subordinates are thinking once and mebbe twice about how hard it’d be to pull him down, set one of them up in his place. And you know what? Victory can cause that kind of thinking, almost as sure as defeat.”

  “But you said it yourself,” Krysty said. “Al’s a hero.”

  “To some,” Ryan said. “And to some, that just gives them one more thing to feel jealous of him over.”

  “You don’t think—”

  He shook his head. “What I think won’t load us any blasters,” he said. “Or keep us from winding up with dirt hitting us in the eyes. We can’t know how things are going to play out from here.”

  “When do we ever?” Doc asked.

  “And you can stop looking at me like that, Krysty. You, too, Mildred. Like I just stomped your new puppy. I’m not saying we jump right ahead out of here. For one thing, it would be hard to do that before we find this redoubt, now, wouldn’t it?

  “So regardless of what you want, or what I want, or any of us want, we’re stuck here for a while. I’m just saying, I want to find this redoubt, if it’s real, as soon as we can, because when has it ever proved to be a bad idea to have an escape route close to hand?”

  Krysty sighed. “You’re right, lover. As usual. But promise me that if we find it, and it has a working mat-trans, we won’t use it unless we absolutely have to get out of here in a hurry.”

  He barked a laugh. “I’m not triple stupe. Nobody hungers for an end to the wandering and constant danger any more than I do. Nobody. But I don’t honestly know if that’s to be found in this world we live in. I don’t know if we can find it here. But the day I stop looking out for all of us, best way I know how, I hope that’s my last day on Earth.”

  Krysty stood and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m okay with that. Now let’s get some sleep.”

  * * *

  SQUATTING BEHIND A bush several hundred yards away, Snake Eye grunted, then snapped his spyglass shut with a click.

  Even had he been skilled at reading lips, he was too far off to make out what anybody had actually said around the campfire. Nor did he care to risk trying to creep significantly closer. He had a healthy respect for the senses and skills of his quarry.

  That was why he so hugely relished having them for quarry. That Baron Jed was willing to pay him for bagging them was just a bright red cherry on top.

  The wrinklie who’d stumbled into the camp was a scabbie—that much was clear—and he had told his listeners a story they obviously found worth trying to draw out. His lone eye had not failed to miss the way they all suddenly stopped taking their turns from the jug, and encouraged their guest to do all the rest of the drinking himself.

  He didn’t reckon any of them had any trouble saying no to booze. He’d studied them far too well for that. He also had studied them far too well to think they’d do anything quite so purposeful...without purpose.

  He was smiling when he went back to his horse, grazing in a shallow draw behind him. He undid the hobbles, stashed them in his saddlebags and mounted.

  Snake Eye had what he needed. For now. Time for a much-needed break.

  He could find his prey once again when he returned to the chase. He felt full confidence in that. They were being careful to keep themselves hidden, but not from him.

  And when he caught up with them, he judged, they would be that much closer to leading him to that which he, and they, both sought.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Gentlemen,” Baron Al said, rising from his chair in the Lenkmans’ parlor and addressing the Protector negotiators, “it may not have much place in diplomatic wrangling, but I’m going to speak my mind and speak it plainly. We would make a damn sight faster progress if Jed Kylie were to come here and talk to me. Man-to-man and baron-to-baron.”

  The emissaries of the Des Moines River Valley Cattlemen’s Protective Association traded uneasy looks.

  “He knows I at least respect a flag of parley,” the baron said. “Ask him yourselves.”

  The emissaries made noncommittal noises. For a fact, Colonel Cody Turnbull thought, they seemed to lack the authority to negotiate effectively. In any sense of the word authority.

  It was a word the colonel took seriously.

  As usual he tried to keep from looking at Jessie Rae, seated at her husband’s side. As usual he failed. She was ravishing in a low-cut yellow gown. And also, tight-lipped with apparent anger.

  He escorted the negotiators to the front door of the manor, where sec men took over the task of seeing them mounted and escorting them out of the Uplander camp. The three men, minor landowners as well as Protector staff officers, mumbled courtesy farewells. They seemed glad to be escaping from the presence of the enemy leader, even though Baron Al had been nothing but courteous himself. Far too much so, in Cody’s opinion.

  The men had seemed shaken and subdued throughout the short, unproductive negotiation session. Cody noticed that even in the yellow lamplight their faces had an unhealthy gray tinge, and their skin seemed to sag on them. Possibly they were still shocked by the abruptness and the scale of their defeat of a few days before.

  Or maybe they were frightened by living under the shadow of their own baron’s reaction to it.

  He heard the ruckus before he even got back to the parlor. He felt his face go hot and his brows draw together.

  “—coddle our enemies like that, Aloysius Siebert?” Jessie Rae’s lovely voice was anything but lovely, pinched and shrill with outraged wrath. That somehow made its sound even more like silver needles going through Cody Turnbull’s ears straight to his heart.

  Steeling himself, he pushed on against the continuing torrent of her vituperation into the room. His commanding general sat in his chair, his big homely face a blank of puzzlement. His decades-younger wife stood almost nose-to-nose with him, fists clenched at the ends of arms held stiff by her sides. Her own pert and pretty—and to Cody Turnbull, illicitly precious—features were reddened and twisted by her unseemly anger.

  “Lady,” he said quietly, gliding up to take her gently but firmly by the elbow, “please. There’s no point in your exercising yourself so.”

  She tore her arm from his grasp, and in the process turned the full fury of her wrath on him.

  “Don’t you dare lay hands on me, Cody Turnbull! If you were half the man I thought you were, you’d be demanding that our army finish the job of whipping those lowlander curs back to their kennels right this moment, too!”

  “Now, Jessie Rae—” he began.

  “Save your breath, son,” Baron Al said. “I tried that tack already.”

  Jessie Rae sucked down a breath so profound Cody was astonished her breasts didn’t simply explode out of the bodice of her expensive silk dress.

  “Men!” With that final furious exhalation, she turned and stamped from the room in a most indelicate manner.

  Al shook his head. “Poor girl,” he said sadly. “Sometimes she just lets her hate for that sister of hers get the better of her.”

  Cody sighed. “Ah, well. It’s not like she means anything by it.”

  He looked up from under bushy black brows at his second in command. “If you got no further business with me tonight, Colonel, feel free to take yourself off to bed. I
t’s been a long day. Funny how peace can take it out of a body almost as hard and fast as war does. At least when the fighting’s on full-bore, a man knows where he stands.”

  He dropped his chin to his palm to brood. For a moment Cody stared at him, feeling his cheek flush hot and unable to do anything about it.

  How must the poor girl feel, he thought, shackled to a brute like that—forced to submit to the fumbling caresses of his paws? Yes, he’s a capable leader. Yes, he brought us all glorious victory. But late at night, when she slips out of that yellow dress...

  He turned on his heel and walked out. He wouldn’t finish that thought, not when there was danger of betraying his deepest, darkest feelings to his general.

  * * *

  “A MOMENT OF your time, Colonel?”

  Though he billeted in the Lenkman manor along with the general and other key officers, Cody Turnbull had decided to take a last turn around the grounds, hoping to clear his mind—and cool his raging passion—with night air still brisk from the season.

  He stopped on the graveled path that led from the front door of the stately two-story house to the stables and cocked a quizzical eyebrow at the men in Uplander uniforms who had accosted him.

  “Walk with us, if you will,” said the shorter, older and stouter of the two in his customary deep, lugubrious tones. He was Captain Phineas McCormac.

  Turnbull moistened his lips with his tongue. “Certainly.”

  They strolled away. After a few paces where the path curved off to the stables, Cody’s two new companions led him straight on, across grass already damp with dew.

  “We have some concerns we’d like to share with you,” said the taller, thinner and younger of the two. His long sideburns were trimmed close to his narrow face and clipped into points that emphasized the vulpine look of his jaw. His name was Captain Phil Asaro. Like the older man, he was among the landowners with the most substantial holdings in the Uplands, a powerful baron in his own right.

  Like his companion, he also never seemed to contrive to rise higher than company command in the Alliance Army. They were known to resent the fact, which Cody could understand, if not truly sympathize with. It was an affront to men of their standing. Yet the chain of command was sacrosanct; without it they’d have anarchy, and be no better than stickies or tech-nomads.