by James Axler
It took some time to bring him up to date with all the happenings of the past few hours.
THERE WAS A FLURRY OF SNOW about three-thirty in the afternoon, which lay in a thin, powdery coverlet over the city's naked ruins.
J.B. sat in a corner of the underground room, propped up by old blankets, sipping at a can of hot stew, courtesy of Harry Stanton. The Armorer had said that he had a vague recollection of meeting him long years ago, but the description of the stout figure with white hair and mustache didn't ring any memory bells.
Krysty was sitting on the top of the flight of steps, only her head sticking out into the open, keeping watch for any danger.
Mildred was helping J.B. to eat, and Doc was fast asleep, lying on his back and gripping his silver-topped cane, like a Crusader on his tomb holding his sword. The old man's mouth sagged open, and he was snoring noisily.
Ryan had decided to fieldstrip his weapons and had just begun with his pistol.
"Company coming," Krysty called.
"Scalies?"
"No."
Luckily the SIG-Sauer wasn't disassembled, and he quickly ran to join her. Behind him J.B. was shouting for his own blaster and Mildred was trying to find her own ZKR 551 target pistol.
Doc was still fast asleep.
Ryan's immediate assessment was that the new arrivals were one of the juvenile street gangs, such as the Hawks, that Dred had run with.
There were about fifteen, wearing nondescript fur-and-skin jackets and pants. All had on fur caps with a bright yellow splash of paint on the side. Most of them carried little homemade zip guns, but two of them had rebuilt carbines. There were three young women in the group.
When they saw Ryan and Krysty, the gang stopped, spreading into a skirmishing semicircle. The leader was tall and skinny, and he had an extremely long blond mustache, the ends dangling beyond his chin.
"You outies?" he shouted.
Ryan didn't reply, glancing behind him at Mildred. "Wake Doc up and tell him to get his ass up here."
"Seen any scalies here?"
Ryan ignored the second question, as well, watching to see how the teenagers at the end of the line were still moving around, trying to enfold them, like the curving horns of a buffalo.
"You stop or you get chilled," he shouted, waving the automatic where they could all see it.
The tall leader hesitated for a moment, then called out an order in a staccato series of yelps that Ryan guessed were some sort of battle code. Everyone stopped where they stood.
"Asked if you'd seen scalies here. They been moving north and east out of their turf, taking our friends for their fucking slaves."
"Seen them near the river," Ryan replied.
"You got many friends there?"
"Enough."
The reply brought general laughter. The boy with the long mustache tried again. "We don't think there's many of you. Maybe only about three or four. And those fine blasters."
"Move on, kid," Ryan shouted.
"We aren't kids, outie! You fucking wrinklies come into our ville and make like you own the place! Well, you got a lesson coming."
"Be a lot of blood spilled," Ryan warned.
The gang was uneasy, shifting feet in the icy snow, breath frosting around them. The nearest was about fifty yards off, and there was plenty of cover for them. Ryan wasn't altogether happy about being held with one narrow entrance to defend. Only two of them could stand there, and if the gang rushed the cellar, then it could be either side who'd win.
"Going down for the caseless," he whispered to Krysty. "Keep'em talking."
He dived into the basement, allowing Mildred to replace him at the top. J.B. was against the wall, as pale as fresh-fallen snow, gripping his blaster in both hands. Doc was on his feet, looking around for his Le Mat.
"Where in thunderation…? We under attack from hostiles, Ryan?"
"Could be. You haven't lost your blaster, have you?"
"Got to be here someplace, dear boy. Just a matter of laying my hand on… Ah, I have it." He flourished the huge revolver. "Now, damn the torpedoes, I'm ready for them."
"Street gang, did you say?" J.B. said. "Can you hold them?"
"Hope so. About fifteen or so of them. Low-cal blasters. But it's difficult to defend that flight of stairs."
"Want me up there?"
Krysty's voice interrupted the conversation. "Looks like they're going to try it, lover."
"Be there," he called back. Turning to J.B., he said, "Stay here. Best place. Hit any get past us."
"Ryan!" Krysty cried.
"Yeah. Just getting the G-12. Oh, fireblast!"
There was no sign of his precious blaster. The Heckler & Koch G-12 assault rifle had vanished. It had been tucked under the pile of rags he'd been using as a makeshift pillow, before Mildred started…
"Tidying up," he said aloud.
The sound of gunfire prompted him into a whirlwind of controlled violence. The weapon had to be in the cellar. Nothing had been thrown out in the maelstrom of dust and dirt that Mildred had whipped up, so it was underneath the mound of stuff in the corner, beyond J.B.
"Ryan!" Doc yelled in his rich, booming voice.
"Hold them!" The one-eyed man choked and coughed as he delved into the stinking rags, furs and torn lengths of filthy cloth. It was impossible to see, and he worked by feel.
There was more shooting behind him, and he could pick out the distinctive boom of Mildred's .38-caliber revolver and Krysty's lighter 9 mm Heckler & Koch P7A-13. Overlaying them he could hear a barrage of fire from the array of .32s and small handguns outside.
"Got it," the one-eyed man snarled, his fingers closing on the familiar rectangular shape of the automatic rifle.
He turned, blinked through the haze of roiling dirt and saw that Doc was close to him. Mildred was at the bottom of the stairs, trying to reload on the move. Krysty was also retreating, firing her silvered gun at the attackers. "Got about seven or so, but they don't give a shit," she said. "Just keep coming."
"Out of the way, lover," he shouted at Krysty, pushing Mildred from his path, hearing her curse as he jogged her arm and made her drop the handful of bullets for her blaster.
Krysty dodged him, also reaching for a new mag of ammo. The side of her face was flecked with spots of blood, which caught his eye.
"Just stone splinters off a near miss," she said. "Goon!"
He flicked the main control on the G-12 onto full-auto, pausing a fraction of a second at the bottom of the steps, hearing shouts and screams from outside in the street. He picked his way up until his head was nearly level with the top, then peered out.
The survivors of the gang were obviously gathering themselves for the final assault, conveniently grouping together about twenty paces from where Ryan stood. Behind them he saw at least half a dozen corpses and two wounded boys, one trailing blood from a wound on the side of the head, the other crawling toward cover, dragging a broken leg.
"Ace on the line," Ryan said to himself, squeezing the trigger of the blaster.
With a supply of spare ammo, for once he was able to let the immensely powerful blaster roar out to its full potential. On continuous fire the squat weapon spit out the caseless rounds at more than ten per second. The full magazine was gone in less than five seconds.
And every one of the street gang was down and dying.
At such short range the bullets didn't tumble at all, hitting clean at enormous velocity, leaving untreatable exit wounds. Ryan had fired from the shoulder, absorbing the minimum recoil, countering the slight tendency to drift upward that was a failing with most automatic weapons.
Mildred was first up the steps to join him as he slowly lowered the G-12, conscious of how much lighter it felt with an empty mag.
"Judas's blood!" she said. "You took them all out in one. Even the kid I'd clipped in the leg."
Five or six were still moving, foiling in the light snow, some crying out. In less than a minute there was only
stillness and fifteen sprawled bodies.
Ryan turned his back on the bleeding corpses and walked back into the cellar, ready to reload the automatic rifle.
Ready for next time.
Chapter Thirty-Six
THE WORKING PARTY had been sent down to the docks to a long shed that had been converted by the scalies from its prenuke usage as a tobacco warehouse. Now it was arranged to gut the quantities of fish that they caught by ranging up and down the Hudson River.
Not that any of them ever called it by that name. To the scalies, and to their captives, it was simply "the river."
Now there was gray ice, lacing on the edges of the steely water, ice on the slabbed counters, ice on the piles of fish of all shapes and sizes.
Twenty of the norms stood along the side of the heavy metal-topped table, each chained to it by the ankle. The table itself was bolted to the slippery stone floor. Iron buckets were positioned at intervals to be used for either the offal or for the gutted fish.
Dean was one of the workers, who were mainly young boys or, in a couple of cases, older women. He held a short-bladed knife in his right hand. Dragging a thick-skinned eel or monkfish from the pile in front of him and holding it still with his left hand—for many of them were still wriggling in their death throes—he plunged the sharp point in behind the skull, drew it along the body and opened it up to reveal the spilling intestines and the mesh of white bone. A turn of the wrist and the guts spilled out in a gray-and-pink clump.
They went into one of the buckets, the boned and cleaned fish into another.
For some of the fish they had also been ordered to hack off the heads. For this they were each given a stump-hafted cleaver.
It was brutal work, bitterly cold and tiring, and they were kept at it from dawn until dusk with only minimal breaks for mugs of hot gruel. When any of the captives wanted to relieve themselves, they had to do it where they stood, or squat, and call for a scalie to hose the mess away from around their bare feet.
At the end of that day the chains were unlocked, and they were marched under guard back to the sleeping quarters. Those who survived. During that single, endless day, one of the women and the youngest of the boys both fell to the ground, semiconscious, and remained there amid the ice and blood. Even a brutal clubbing and kicking failed to rouse either, and they were eventually unchained and dragged out of the doorway. Dean heard the double splash as they were heaved, still living, into the sullen river.
At dusk the gutting tools had to be thrown into a box, under the indifferent supervision of a fat scalie with an M-16. The orders were to shout out as you dropped them in so that he could check that both the cleaver and the gutting knife were returned.
Dean saw, as he shuffled forward, that the scalie wasn't paying attention and merely looked up every now and again as the steel blades chinked against each other.
"Returning two here, boss," called the old woman in front of Dean, and received a casual glance from the guard.
Rona had drilled everything she knew about survival in Deathlands into her young son. "Always take your chances when they come. Don't wait for tomorrow, because tomorrow has a nasty habit of not coming."
The short knife was tucked into the back of his belt. The cleaver in his right hand. "Returning two here, boss," he said, making sure the metal rang against the others in the box. The scalie didn't even look up.
That night he quietly honed the steel against the concrete floor, relishing the thin whispering sound it made. He felt the brittle edge against the palm of his hand, testing the needle point with the tip of a finger.
It wasn't much, but at least it was better than nothing.
RYAN CONSIDERED going to see Harry Stanton again. The trouble was that everyone wanted to go and see the temple of wonders. Krysty was fascinated by anything that dated from the prenuke period because they had a mythic quality for her. For Doc and Mildred the interest was different. They'd both lived in that strange time of neurosis and betrayal, and to see again the memorabilia that Ryan had described would give their own past an extra layer of reality.
J.B. wanted to go to see the collection of weaponry. Though he was obviously on the mend, the Armorer was still a frail shadow of the man he'd been. Mildred kept giving him injections, at longer intervals, and feeding him from the Stanton food package. He insisted on getting up and exercising, working out in a corner of the cellar near the fire. Outside it was still bitingly cold, the sky overcast and threatening.
In the end Ryan decided that the only safe decision was for everyone to remain close to the basement. With only five of them, and J.B. some way off full health, it would be madness to split their forces— particularly with the scalies active only a few blocks away and with the mangled corpses of some of the street gang still lying in the street.
"Keep where we are. The recce wag should be here sometime after dusk. Before full dark we'll have a council and get our plans together."
DOC FELL ASLEEP during the afternoon, and Ryan and Krysty went up top to snatch a little fresh air. The sky had taken on a strange orange glow, stippled with diagonal slashes of pale clouds. The wind had remained northerly, and the temperature didn't seem quite so bitingly cold.
J.B. was dozing, with Mildred sitting beside him shrouded in blankets like a Kiowa squaw. Her head sagged on her chest and she seemed to be asleep. Ryan and Krysty left her undisturbed.
"How are you feeling, lover?" Krysty asked as they strolled close together through the icy, deserted streets.
"Not bad."
"Not bad?"
"I feel fine, Krysty. Tired. Worried. Old knife wound near the kidneys is playing up with the cold. The blue norther cuts right into the empty socket of my eye and makes it water. That's what I meant by 'not bad.' All right?"
She squeezed his arm. "Sure. I understand."
He turned to face her. "Do you, lover? Does anyone understand anyone?"
"Well as anyone can."
Ryan nodded. "Look, this hasn't been the best of times."
"The worst of times?" she asked.
"No. Not that. But I've known better. To have J.B. go down with that illness and nearly made worm food, then to hear I've got a son I've never seen, a boy who's ten years old."
Krysty looked past him across the lunar landscape of ruined, tumbled buildings. The sun was sinking over the New Jersey swamps, lengthening the shadows. It was a gloomy prospect, filling her heart with melancholy. Suddenly she felt that things were never going to be the same, that they'd somehow crossed a border in the night, not knowing it, and were now doomed to live forever in another country.
"It's going to be all right," she said quietly.
"Think so, lover?"
"Yeah, Ryan, I think so."
"But do you see that?"
She turned away from him, taking a few steps along the sidewalk. She kicked at a round pebble in a puddle of gray water, stubbing her toe as she discovered it was iced in solidly. "Shit!"
"I asked if you could see that we'd be fine. All of us."
"You know seeing doesn't work like that. I can't tell you. You know what I've wanted ever since we first met up."
"Some place quiet to take time out of the running and the killing. Somewhere green by running water, where we could live easy and raise children."
There was a long stillness between them, a cold void.
Krysty moved farther away from him. "Think that's still going to be possible?"
"Why not?"
"Dean is why not. Look, don't get me wrong, lover. Gaia! This isn't jealousy about a woman you fucked a couple of times years before we even met. It's not that."
"No?"
She turned and faced him, managing a wry smile. "No. Really."
"So what is it?"
"A kid of ten. If he'd been a baby or if he'd been about fifteen…"
Ryan stepped closer to her. "I don't catch you, lover."
"A baby can be left someplace safe. Older boy can make his own w
ay."
"But Dean, ten years old, is going to come between us."
"Mebbe."
"Mebbe not."
He reached out and folded her into his arms, holding her very tightly, kissing her on the side of the face.
For a moment she resisted, then kissed him back. "Ryan, it might be fine, but I surely know it won't be easy."
"Nobody ever said it would be."
They walked cautiously around the block until Ryan's worry got the better of him and they returned quickly to the cellar.
"If they're all asleep," Ryan said, "they'll be like a bunch of blind kittens. Any swift and evil bastard could come in and take them."
But all was well.
Better than well.
Doc slept like a child, hands folded across his breast, the gleaming ivory canyon of his open mouth a great tribute to orthodontal expertise.
For a moment, as their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, Ryan and Krysty couldn't see either Mildred or J.B. Then they noticed movement under blankets at the far side of the fire. A steady, rhythmic movement with low, muffled moans.
"Seems like he's getting better," Ryan observed.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
AFTER J.B. AND Mildred had finished their lovemaking, Doc was woken up and they had a brief council of war.
The only problem was whether J.B. had recovered sufficiently to go along on the raid to rescue Dean from the scalies.
"I'll go."
Ryan sat cross-legged across the fire from his oldest friend. "If I'm not certain about you, then I'll be trying to watch your back as well as my own. And that's not a starter."
"Sure. So if I didn't think I was ready, would I want to go?"
Ryan grinned. "Sure you would, J.B. You know that. Miss something like this? Never."
Krysty leaned forward. "Mildred? You're the only one with any professional knowledge. Is he well enough to come?"
"Well, in all my medical days I never saw a man so close to death make such an amazing recovery. Thirty-six hours ago and I'd have been polishing the brass on the coffin handles. Now? Now he's a whole lot better."
