"Like my own seeing," Krysty said to Ryan. "Sometimes it works like a miracle. Sometimes it doesn't work. And there's no reason for the good or the bad."
"Yeah, I understand. Like my shooting. Nine from ten I can hit the ace on the line. Tenth time.I can't."
"Today was one of the nine from ten, Dad."
"Yeah, Dean, it was."
The young woman was wrapping it up, looking now toward Ryan and his group. "Some say that what I have is a blessing. I say it isn't. I say that it is all too often a curse. I'm real sorry the ace of spades turned up tonight."
Then she was gone, walking quickly behind the piano toward the bar, vanishing through a door at the back of a beaded curtain.
NOW THAT THEY'D MADE their presence known to the packed saloon, there was no longer any point in making a tactful withdrawal back up the stairs to their rooms.
"Drinks, anyone?"
Ryan grinned as everyone nodded at his suggestion. He led the way between the tables, where the poker games had continued again, past the dart-board, easing through the crowd to the bar, beckoning to Clinkerscales.
"Yes, Mr. Cawdor? What'll it be? And these are on the house, as well, after your pretty piece of shooting. Saved us a nasty murder, it did. And that might easy have carried on into a lynching."
"Where's the woman come from?" Krysty asked.
"She's a true mutie seer. Came in from the west a day or so ago. Showed me enough to know that she was for real. Thought it might be an attraction. Didn't figure on it ending with blood on the barroom floor."
He quickly poured out a round of drinks, mainly beers, with a Cointreau for Krysty and Dean.
Jak wandered off to watch the dart throwers, eventually insinuating himself into the next game.
The rest of them stayed at the heart of the crush around the bar, enjoying their drinks, enjoying the evening.
Chapter Fourteen
After the excitement of Emma Tyler and her interrupted act, the Lincoln Inn had quieted down. The whores circulated, some of them bare-breasted, lifting their ragged skirts to show prospective Johns what they might be buying.
The card games were proceeding, with the occasional imprecation as an attempt to draw to an inside straight met its inevitable failure.
A few of the shanty town locals were interested in the group of outlanders, a couple of them fascinated by Ryan's powerful handblaster, asking if they could take a look at it.
"Sorry," Ryan said. "Nobody touches my blaster."
But there seemed to be no ill-feeling.
Everyone had a second round of drinks.
Around a quarter hour later, Clinkerscales passed by and touched Ryan gently on the shoulder. "Could be some trouble brewing," he said quietly.
"Last group that came in?"
"You spotted them?"
Ryan nodded. "Trader used to say that a man who doesn't keep his eyes open won't get to see his death coming. They came in together, nine of them. Now they've split up."
"Ones I mentioned before. Coldhearts. Heavily armed with sawn-downs as well as hideaways."
"You reckon they could be scouting for Baron Sharpe?"
Clinkerscales nodded, wiping away at a glass as he spoke. "He pays well for unusual strangers. Either to work in the ville or as part of his collection."
Ryan bit his lip. "We'd be no use to them dead?"
"Depends on who they want, Mr. Cawdor. I got a suss that they could be after that girl."
"Emma Tyler."
"And Mr. Lauren and Miss Wroth. Something a bit different about them."
The barkeep waved a hand to calls for service from farther down the room. "Be careful. I can't afford to fall out with old Sharpie. Take my meaning?"
" 'Course. I'll collect everyone together and we'll go up to our rooms. Be away at first light. Thanks for everything you've done for us."
The two men shook hands.
"Good to know of Trader," the barkeep said. "There's still a few folks around here remember the man with thanks in their hearts. A woman I met, year or so ago, around the Hole, claimed she rode with him."
"What was her name?" Ryan asked, interested at the thought of meeting up with an old companion.
"Can't recall."
The fur-clad hunter at the far end of the room was banging with his fist to attract attention, and Clinkerscales gave Ryan a quick smile and went to serve him.
"Trouble?" Krysty asked, standing just behind Ryan, picking up the vibes.
"Could be. Gang that he mentioned earlier. Before we ate. Went out. Now they're back. Two over there by Jak. Rest are scattered. One's alongside Doc, watching the main poker game. Find Mildred and J.B. and we'll get out of here, upstairs. I'll collect Dean, Doc and Jak."
But the wheel was already in spin.
"Fuckin' cheatin' mutie!"
The voice soared over the background noise in the Lincoln Inn, bringing a hush. It came from near the dartboard.
"Yeah, you fuckin' cheat. You best come outside with us and we'll teach you good."
Jak was standing at the board, hand poised to pick out the trio of steel-tipped darts. "What's problem you two?" he said quietly.
"No mutie throws that good. Never fuckin' missed one, snowbird."
Everyone was watching the drama-except Ryan and J.B., who were looking around the room, trying to pick out the rest of the group. The Armorer had spotted the gang when they came in through the swinging doors, just as Ryan had.
But all the friends had their blasters drawn, all except Jak.
The slender youth, in his ragged camouflage jacket, was standing still, as though he were petrified with terror, fingers just brushing the flights of the darts.
The two men who'd called him out were both inches over six feet, broad-shouldered, in patched shirts. One had a sawed-down scattergun tucked in his belt, one hand resting casually on the stock. The other had a remake revolver, in a worn holster on his right hip.
Ryan could easily have gunned both of them down, but that wouldn't flush out the others in the gang. He had to wait and let Jak make his move.
"Didn't cheat."
"Course you did, you shit-for-brains little runt! We both saw you."
Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan glimpsed the pale face of Emma Tyler, peering round the edge of the door at the side of the bar. Her golden eyes were open very wide, and she looked to be terrified.
"Come on," said the taller of the two bullying thugs. "Outside!"
Jak made his move, plucking the darts from the board and throwing them, one, two, three, almost too quick to follow with the human eye.
Both men cried out in pain and shock, and everyone in the saloon was witness to the albino's unique skill.
One dart had struck home in the taller man's left cheek, missing his eye by a scant inch, while the third one pierced the corner of his mouth, penetrating through the tongue, sticking in the gum.
The second of the missiles landed in the exact center of the other man's forehead, thrown with such force that it drove through the skin and the thin layer of flesh, driving into the bone at the front of the skull, standing out like the ornamented horn of a unicorn.
"Holy Mary!" breathed a young man at a table just in front of Ryan.
But Jak wasn't finished.
The darts were enough to devastate the two men, putting them totally off balance, even though the injuries caused by the darts weren't all that serious.
There were two more blurs in the smoky air, as the teenager drew a pair of his concealed throwing knives, hurling the leaf-shaped blades with murderous force and accuracy.
One sliced into the taller man's neck as he staggered backward, his hands lifted to the darts that stuck out of his face. It opened up the artery beneath his ear, blood spraying thickly, splattering on the ceiling, dappling the torn frock of a screaming whore.
The other knife was also aimed at the throat, penetrating the front of the second man's neck, through his larynx, opening his windpipe, flooding his lungs with a dr
owning torrent of his own blood.
The gaudy saloon erupted into panic and dying.
Tables went over, poker chips and jack flying through the air in seeming slow motion. Virtually all of the men hit the floor, yelling, some of them struggling to draw blasters and knives as they went down. Whores flopped among them like helpless, wailing, landed fish.
Clinkerscales instantly had his sawed-down Bernardelli Italia in his hands, standing four-square behind the bar, his face streaming with sweat, jaw jutting angrily. He shouted for calm at the top of his voice, but failed to get himself heard above the yelping, shrieking panic.
It was impossible to obtain an overall picture of the heart of the fight, which was basically Ryan and his companions against the nine-strong gang, which had suddenly become a seven-strong gang.
The man that Ryan had been watching had a long-barreled pistol out and cocked, aiming it at Jak. But a burst of lead from the Armorer's Uzi converted his skull into a mist of blood, splintered bone and ragged slices of brain.
Doc had drawn his J. E. B. Stuart Commemorative gold-plated Le Mat as soon as the situation began to develop, trying to edge his way through the crowd toward Jak's side. But the crush of people made movement almost impossible. He noticed that a skinny balding man standing next to him had pulled out a small beat-up automatic pistol and was aiming it at Ryan.
"I think not," Doc said quietly, pushing the barrel of the Le Mat into the man's ribs, expecting him to immediately drop the blaster and surrender.
To his amazement, the shootist spit a florid curse at him and began to swing his own gun around, ready to put a bullet into Doc's chest.
"I am not." Doc began, considering remonstrating with the fellow for his extreme foolishness, then he realized that this wasn't a time for talking.
It was a time for shooting.
He immediately squeezed the slender trigger on the massive handblaster, firing the.63-caliber shotgun round from the gaping barrel.
The explosion was muffled by the blaster being pressed into the man's body, but the effect was devastating.
The shot almost cut the balding killer in two, ripping through his entrails, smashing his spine, reducing liver and kidneys to tatters of bloodied pulp. He dropped at Doc's feet, blood pouring from his open mouth, the blaster clattering onto the splintered floor.
Which still left five of the gang of would-be assassins on their feet.
Ryan shot down one who'd drawn a Saturday-night special from a holster inside his long jacket, the bullet going neatly in one ear, coming out a lot less neatly through the angle of the jaw, exiting in a gusher of blood and shards of teeth.
The crimson fountain hit one of the kneeling sluts in the head, the sharp pieces of bone cutting her across the forehead, a curtain of her own blood blinding her. She erupted into thrashing hysterics, one of her ankle boots hitting a crouching trapper in the face and breaking his nose.
There was another of the gang near the bar. His left ear had been hacked away and a chunk of his cheek had vanished with it. The old scar pulled the corner of his mouth up into a fearsome grin, also tugging down his left eye into an angry snarl.
He had a derringer up each sleeve, on spring releases, and they popped into his hands. To gain a better shot at Ryan's group he began to clamber onto the bar, ignoring Clinkerscales and his sawed-down, which was the last mistake he ever got to make.
The barman didn't even have to move. He jammed the twin barrels up into the man's groin from below and pulled the twin triggers, firing both the 12-gauge rounds at point-blank range.
Much went unnoticed amid the general bedlam of noise and dying, but not this killing.
"Fireblast!" Ryan exclaimed admiringly.
"Gaia!" Krysty said, in appalled amazement.
J.B. shook his head, interested in the technical side of the two shots. "Dark night!"
The force of the double blast lifted the disfigured man off the bar, giving the momentary illusion that he was floating in space, a bizarre miracle of yogic flying.
But the illusion was marred by the blurring welter of blood and flesh that steamed out from the man's groin. The shots totally destroyed the genitals, ripping unhindered into the lower part of the abdomen, opening a gash larger than a man's fist through which loops of ragged intestine, gray and pinkish yellow, began to tumble.
In a deathly muscle spasm, he fired both the derringers, drilling two neat holes in the cracked plaster of the ceiling.
His flailing, flopping corpse landed back on the bar, almost on top of Clinkerscales, who calmly pushed the slimy mess off onto the floor and reloaded his scattergun.
Six were dead or dying, three of the gang remaining alive.
Less than eight seconds had passed since Jak had pulled the darts out of the board.
When death comes easy, it comes fast.
Mildred and Dean took out the seventh killer. He'd taken refuge behind the piano, trying to shoot at Doc. Mildred couldn't get a clean shot at him but the boy, farther round, was just able to see the man's kneeling leg.
Holding the Hi-Power in both hands he fired twice, narrowly missing the first time, putting a 9 mm full-metal jacket into the exposed ankle at the second attempt.
A scream of agony soared above the general chaos, and the man staggered sideways, giving Mildred the easiest of shots with her ZKR 551 Czech target revolver. At twenty-feet range there was no way she was going to miss, drilling the big Smith & Wesson.38 round into the center of his chest, putting him down in the bloodied sawdust.
Krysty had retreated toward the stairs, trying to take in everything that was happening. One of the last two survivors suddenly appeared. Seeing that their cause was irretrievably doomed, he pushed her aside and ran for the second floor and a chance of escape out of one of the bedrooms.
"No," Krysty said quietly. She leveled her short-barreled pistol, putting two rounds into the middle of the man's back, stopping him in his tracks, only a couple of steps from the landing. His body jerked under the impact of the.38 rounds, nearly throwing him on his face. He recovered his balance, gave a long, gasping sigh, straightened and toppled backward down the staircase, landing by Krysty's feet.
"One left," Ryan muttered, looking around the saloon and seeing only the panic of the living and the stillness of the dead. "Where is-"
Then he found out.
An arm crooked around his throat and he felt the sharp tingle of cold steel against his neck. A tiny worm of warmth trickled down across his chest.
"A move and the one-eyed bastard gets it. Him and me are walking out together."
Ryan was surprised by the stupidity of his attacker, who seemed totally oblivious to the fact that his victim was still holding a powerful automatic blaster in his right hand.
"Nobody fuckin' move or else I'll slit his throat open."
"Then you get to die slowly and painfully," J.B. called, distracting the man and giving Ryan the moment he needed.
It was a very small movement. He edged his right hand behind himself, until the muzzle was touching the body of the would-be killer. At the same time Ryan lifted his left hand a little, up toward his chest.
Synchronicity was important if he wasn't going to find he'd chilled his enemy but also lost his own life. He squeezed the trigger and felt the blaster buck, sending a sharp pain up to the elbow, where he hadn't been able to brace the SIG-Sauer properly. Simultaneously he'd swept up his left hand, forcing the straight razor away from his throat, then stepped forward, turning and putting another round into the wounded man's chest.
"Cheatin' bastard." The razor dropped from nerveless fingers, tinkling on the floor, where it was surrounded by a puddle of crimson from the two bullet holes.
"That's all nine," Clinkerscales called. "Everyone can get up now and go on home. We got some cleaning up to do. Open again tomorrow for business. As usual."
Ryan backed away toward the stairs, stepping over corpses, avoiding the pools of congealing blood. His blaster kept the saloon covered, drawin
g the other six after him, all of them watching for any sign of aggression.
But there wasn't any further threat.
Several of the whores were still hysterical. One or two of the others saw how much manly attention that got and threw themselves into screaming fits, as well.
By the time the friends reached the top of the stairs, the bar was resuming a faint resemblance of normality. Fully three-quarters of the surviving men in the place were already gone, scooting out through the bat-wing doors, vanishing into the darkness of the shantytown.
James Axler - Deathlands 27 - Ground Zero Page 11