Nemesis

by James Axler

  “Interesting,” Olympia said, gazing at the grazing herd with her blue-jade eyes. Seen up close they had little folds of skin at the inner corners. Ricky’s mother had told him those were called epicanthic folds, and usually meant a person had Asian ancestry. Since they had taught him well, using cracked and ancient books his father had traded for over the years, he even knew where Asia was.

  He thought Olympia was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Except for his older sister Yamile, who didn’t count, of course, because she was his sister—and again he felt the obligatory pang of guilt and grief that he hadn’t yet made good on his vow to find and rescue her. And of course for Krysty, who also didn’t count in a way.

  Ricky did know enough to realize in a vague sort of way that it was to be expected he’d exist in a sort of constant simmer of horniness, self-doubt and massive frustration. He tried hard not to envision Krysty naked, made all the more daunting a task by the fact that he had seen her naked a few times, when she had stripped quite unself-consciously bare to go skinny dipping and bathing in some stream. He had similarly noticed that Mildred, stocky though she was, wasn’t without her charms, but he didn’t actually desire either woman. Not that that altogether stopped his body from responding to their nearness and femininity. He knew nothing would ever happen with either of them; that if he ever made a try for one the worst thing that was likely to happen was not that their menfolk would squash him like a bug, but that the women would merely laugh.

  Although Ricky also knew that if he made a pest of himself to Krysty, or even Mildred, Ryan would cast him out of their band with barely a second thought. And that was all the family Ricky had now. He literally would rather die than lose them.

  Anyway...he found himself also thinking of Krysty and Mildred as his mothers, somehow, which made the inevitable sixteen-year-old lust for their female flesh seem icky and disturbing. It made him guilty that he couldn’t stop it entirely.

  As for Olympia, he had never seen her naked. The joke around camp was that she had been born in that uniform-like brown outfit she wore. No one had seen her wash it or even change it, yet it appeared spotless and clean-smelling each morning. With her slim figure and long legs and quite astonishing height, she certainly exerted a powerful appeal on his feverish young brain and more southerly parts.

  But even though she always treated him—and Jak, who really was a grownup, although only a few years older than Ricky—with the same quiet though not-deferential respect she treated everybody, the mystery woman scared the hell out of Ricky.

  He found himself thinking of Dezzy, the sec woman from Cable’s crew. When the adults got occupied butchering the wounded buffalo yesterday, Olympia asked for permission to take Jak and Ricky with her to put the remainder out of their misery. Because there was no shortage of labor anyway—there weren’t that many salvageable carcasses—and because nobody felt all that comfortable letting Jak Lauren loose with his blades, Ryan had agreed, as had Bass.

  To Ricky’s surprise Dezzy had asked for and received permission to join them, too.

  It had been a grim job. Despite the large stocks Bass had brought along they couldn’t afford to waste ammo. They only shot the ones who were otherwise hard to reach, or still active enough to be too dangerous to approach. Otherwise they relied on knives, axes and sometimes a pickax.

  Dezzy had done her part, thin-lipped and looking even paler than usual. When Ricky, during a break to breathe, drink water and make a token effort to clean the blood drops from their faces, asked why she was doing this, she answered tautly, “I like animals.”

  Which Ricky understood. He had the same reason. He had no compunction about killing animals for food, but he hated to see them suffer unnecessarily. Oddly enough, he knew Jak felt a variation of the same thing: in his case the hunter’s ethos of the clean kill.

  As for Olympia, well, who knew why she did anything? He only knew that scary or not, she was interesting to be around. And usually fun.

  “Ready?”

  It was Olympia herself, breaking in on his reverie in her inevitable quiet yet somehow decisive-sounding voice. He shook himself.

  “Yeah. Sorry. Uh, right. We better get back.”

  “Not yet,” Olympia said. “Let’s head up in the heights near the rest stop to scope it out first.”

  “Wait!” Ricky exclaimed. “No! We can’t!”

  By then he’d realized to his horror that he was afraid of Olympia. And that it was also just exactly too late to back down. Blood didn’t go back in the body, Ryan and J.B. liked to say, quoting their long-ago boss and mentor who was known only as Trader.

  Olympia didn’t, however, devour him. Nor even stab him with the combat knife scabbarded on the hip opposite where her beefy six-shooter rode in its flapped leather holster. She merely looked at him and asked, “Why can’t we?”

  “We have to get back!” he stammered. “Ryan said we should join back up before they went into the rest stop.”

  “Late,” Jak said. He seemed neutral in the debate. He accepted Ryan as leader, Ricky knew, but he had also learned his new best friend was anything but averse to being rebellious every now and then. Just to show he could.

  Still, Ricky’s heart fell.

  “Yeah, I know. We’re probably in trouble already,” he said.

  Was it his imagination or did the woman almost smile? “Then what’s the problem?” she asked.

  “Well, they’ll worry about us!”

  Olympia cocked her head to one side and raised a brow in a look that asked, “Seriously?”

  “It’s the Deathlands,” she said. “Nowhere is safe. Anyway, I’ve sized up your friends, and seen that gray wolf of a leader of yours in action. Do you really think you’re safe with them? Or do they always seem to wind up in the midst of danger?”

  Jak snorted an uncharacteristic laugh. Ricky felt his cheeks burn. No, since he had joined Ryan and his crew, life had been anything but safe.

  But he had to defend his new family. “Okay, sure. You’re right. But there’s still no place on Earth safer than next to Ryan and J.B. And the rest, too!”

  “You may be right, at that. Now come on. I’m the adult. I’ll take the heat if there’s any.”

  Jak shot her a hot look.

  “All right. You’re adult, too, Jak Lauren. And I’m the paying customer. I’ll tell them I ordered you to come along. To keep me safe from wolves.”

  Jak grinned at that.

  “All right,” Ricky said, still reluctant. Although come to think of it, he wasn’t exactly eager to get back now and face J.B., much less Ryan.

  She turned the bike and pushed off. “Then what are you waiting for? Let’s go!”

  Part III:

  The Tribulation

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Got to hand it to you, Mr. Croom,” Mildred said. “You managed to wrangle us some prime quarters. Even if it must have set you back a handsome chunk of jack.”

  To her it looked like an old Army barracks, even to the faded tones of green and brown. Basically a big square house with a pitched roof, in decent enough shape, had been subdivided into a few rooms with improvised walls of wood panels, most of which you wouldn’t want to lean against for fear of getting splinters in your ass. It was still a big step up from the rest of the barracks, which was divided into smaller sleeping spaces with curtains, also random and improvised. Still, there was room for the thirty-five or so travelers from the master merchant’s convoy to sleep with a roof over their heads, in high comfort by contemporary standards, and with at least a nod to privacy.

  She looked at J.B. and grinned. He blinked at her. As usual he wasn’t much for reading body language, much less hints.

  Never mind, John Barrymore, she silently promised. I got some plans for later on tonight.

  Bass Croom chuckled. It was a big-ma
n chuckle, rolling up from deep in that oil-drum chest. Though Mildred had learned to be wary of most people she met in the Deathlands, and trader types second maybe only to barons, she sized it up as a genuine laugh. Croom seemed a genuine kind of guy, who genuinely cared for his people, genuinely grieved over their one fatality of the trip, itself something of a minor miracle.

  That didn’t account, in her estimation, for the dark circles deepening morning by morning beneath his gray eyes. Nor the fact he sometimes seemed to have a bit of a problem letting go of the bottle late at night. But despite the amazing ease of most of their journey across the worst of the Deathlands, there had to be insane levels of stress involved in shepherding his big ungainly metal-and-meat worm all the way to the Pacific Northwest.

  “Bry Raker charged me an arm and a leg, you can rest assured,” the trader said. “But—” he shrugged like a mountain trying to lose some annoying climbers “—I think we can all use a good rest. So it’s well worth it.”

  “It’d be better if Olympia was here,” Morty complained. As usual he was hanging behind his brother’s shoulder as if to make himself part of the decision-making.

  Cable swung his hot green glare from Ryan to Morty. “Listen,” he said, not unreasonably, “you should just forget about her. And mebbe my sec women, while you’re at it. They’re sec, not playthings.”

  Morty puffed up. He wasn’t soft, Mildred knew that, although where he got the strength and muscle tone was completely beyond her, since he never did a lick of work that she could see, or otherwise exercised. Maybe he was just one of those people blessed with a constitution that kept them fit no matter how inert they were.

  “Listen,” the younger Croom snarled at Cable, “you’re not the boss of me.”

  “He’s right, Morty,” Bass said. With amazing gentleness under the circumstances. Not for the first time Mildred wondered why the merchant didn’t just unload a good backhand on the boy, which he was, despite having adult years in her own terms, and definitely by Deathlands standards.

  “Miss Olympia is a paying customer. Don’t forget that. Anyway, she doesn’t seem interested, and that’s a fact.”

  “You just want her for yourself!” Morty flared. “I’ve seen the way you stare at her! All hot-eyed like you want to eat her up.”

  Bass frowned, then smoothed his craggy brow and shook his head.

  “You don’t understand, Morty. She just reminds me of...somebody I knew a long time ago. And while you’re at it, why not give all my female employees a break? The rule back home was always no dipping your pen in the company inkwell. I haven’t changed that on the road.”

  Morty turned red, but he said no more. Instead he went stomping off down the hall.

  “There he goes in a snit,” Mildred muttered, mostly to her friends, but not caring who else heard. “His favorite conveyance.”

  Krysty shook her head in pretend reproof. Doc stifled a laugh into an equine snort, which surprised Mildred. She’d thought the old man was off in a world of his own the way he’d been acting once they hit Raker’s Rest.

  “Anyway, the hard part’s over,” Cable said. His eyes seemed unnaturally bright, his manner crisp to the point of brittleness. Mildred didn’t like the eye he was giving Ryan as they stood in the corridor outside the walled bedrooms. Then again, she never did, much.

  “Over for now,” Bass said, cocking his head and looking at his sec boss.

  “Well, we crossed the big, bad Deathlands, right? We’re at the Rockies. I mean, it’s all easy from here the rest of the way. Right? A cakewalk.”

  J.B. gave Ryan a look. For the Armorer that was equivalent to sending up a warning flare: trouble ahead.

  “Not necessarily the case,” Ryan said calmly.

  Cable swung around into Ryan’s face. “Listen here, One-Eye,” he said. “We’re not on the road now. You may be the big Deathlands expert. But we’re in a ville now, or the same as. This is my show. So show me some respect, understand?”

  Ryan just looked at him.

  Bass cleared his throat.

  “That’s enough, Dace.”

  Cable lowered his head as he turned. “I just wanted—”

  “You need to take it down,” Bass said as sternly as Mildred ever heard him talk to anybody. “Yes, you’re good at your job. Everybody knows that, including Mr. Cawdor and his friends. And now you need to go take care of it. Just because we’re in a temporary safe haven doesn’t mean we can let our guard down completely, now, does it?”

  And to draw the sting he ended with a smile and an avuncular hand on Cable’s shoulder. The sec boss gulped, nodded and went on his way. As he did, his shoulders squared and his stride grew more assertive: he was back on the job again.

  Bass sighed. Mildred understood. He’d just had to deal with both of his problem children in the space of under a minute. What she found harder to catch hold of was why he put up with their shit. Sure, Morty was blood and Cable was a good sec boss, but that didn’t mean either would fail to benefit from a good slapping-down. And Bass for all that he preferred gentleness and openness in his dealings was no soft man.

  “Long time ago,” he said, his eyes looking at nowhere in particular, “right where I was getting my real beginning in this bad old world, after a...false start or two, I ran across a wolf cub. Young, starving, cold, whipped out of his pack. I took him in and raised him.

  “And he responded. Started showing a dog’s loyalty to me. I found myself with, what do they call it? A Chinese obligation to him? I couldn’t just cut him loose. He’s served me loyally and well and become my best friend in the bargain. So if sometimes he snarls and snaps when he shouldn’t, well, I just try to correct that and move on. You know?”

  “Is having your sec boss for a best friend really good business?” Mildred couldn’t keep from asking.

  Bass laughed out loud.

  “Beats the simple hell out of having one who’s your enemy,” he said. “Believe you me, Miss Wyeth. And now if you’ll excuse me, I want to go take advantage of those hot shower privileges Bry Raker charged me my left arm for. I’ll see you at dinner, ladies, gentlemen.”

  He moved off, leaving the group of friends to themselves in the twilight gloom of the hall. Outside the window at one end the light had gone almost slate gray.

  “I’m still nervous about this Cable,” Mildred announced. “I mean, I see why Croom sticks with him now.”

  “A good sec man is hard to find,” J.B. said. “Man knows his job, got to give him his due.”

  “He worries me, too,” Krysty said. “He seems fixated on you, Ryan.”

  “Why?” Mildred demanded. “What is his major malfunction?”

  “The canine metaphor our employer used of their relationship is most apt,” Doc said. “Until now Mr. Cable has been undisputed leader of the security pack. Alpha, I believe the—my captors—called it. But now he perceives a threat.”

  “But there is none,” Krysty said. “Croom hired us to help on the journey cross-country, where even Cable admitted he didn’t have experience.”

  Doc shook his head. “Sadly, that is not how he sees it. To him Ryan is a rival, and will a rival remain. Until the issue is resolved.”

  Ryan looked grimmer even than usual. “Sooner or later he’ll force the issue,” he grunted. “Till then I’ll live.”

  “So how do you handle it?” Mildred asked.

  Ryan shrugged. “Same as I been doing. Trying not to cross paths with him when I don’t have to, try to keep pushing things down the road. Best, to where it ends and we part ways with Mr. Croom and his pals.”

  Mildred cocked a skeptical eyebrow. “Think it’ll work that way?”

  “Does it ever?”

  “All right,” Krysty said. “Enough dark talk and long faces. Ryan, you’re coming with me. Mr. Croom paid for shower privileges for
us, too. We have a party to attend, and I won’t go smelling like a week-chilled skunk. You, either. To say nothing of when we share our own private bedroom tonight, for the first time in what seems like years.”

  She took his arm and tugged. Mildred would’ve thought it’d take a stronger man than even Ryan to resist the lure of seeing Krysty naked, no matter how often he got to do it. But Ryan held back, his face still dark.

  “What’s eating you, lover?” Krysty said. “I’ve been sensing it since we got here.”

  He shook his head. “Something’s not right,” he said. “Can’t put my finger on it. That gripes at me.”

  “It’s the fact Jak and Ricky disobeyed and still haven’t come back in, even though it’s full dark,” Mildred said.

  “Mebbe,” Ryan said slowly.

  She shook her head. “I wonder where those fool kids are?”

  * * *

  DINNER WAS over-the-top extravagant, even by Ryan’s standards as a baron’s son.

  The dining hall was a frame annex to the big house at the north end of the rest stop’s central yard. Ryan guessed it was a general eatery for employees who didn’t have their own residences in the vast compound, as he gathered some didn’t. But this night the boss himself had taken it over to provide a welcome feast for what he himself had described as the biggest convoy to come through in years.

  It started off with vegetable soup made with some kind of meat stock—Ryan guessed buffalo, though he wasn’t sure. Croom had gotten a decent price for a ton or so of salted buffalo meat from the previous day’s adventure, so why wouldn’t Raker use it? But he wasn’t sure.

  One thing he was sure of: it was good—would’ve been if they hadn’t been living on road food for two weeks, although Croom’s cook was all the time, since that’s all anybody called him—was good at his job. Still, there were limits what even he could whip up over a campfire, like as not made of dried buffalo chips.

  As he took up another spoonful of the hot, savory soup, Ryan caught Krysty’s eye across the table. She smiled. She was wearing her usual clothes, but was clean. So was he.