by James Axler
"Mom's real bad, mister," the little boy said in a shocked, piping voice.
"Yeah. Go get her some help, son. That way." He pointed behind him, toward the main plaza.
"Thanks, mister. You know you only got one eye, mister?"
"I noticed, kid. Move it!"
The boy darted off, followed more slowly by his mother, who kept her face averted from Ryan.
From the direction Ferryman was heading in, he was probably making for the transport section of Towse, expecting to grab an armored wag or a two-wheel to make his escape.
A corpse of a naked man, grotesquely fat, almost filled the alley. Ryan leaped over it, noticing as he passed that the hilt of a carving knife protruded from the rolls of fat that rippled across the body. He wondered, as he moved on, whether someone had taken advantage of the general mayhem to indulge in a little domestic murder.
A bullet struck the wall a yard from Ryan's face, showering him with splinters. He pressed himself into a doorway, trying to see where the attacker was hiding, but the moon was almost down and it was extremely dark.
"Lucky, outlander!"
"Ferryman?"
"What a surprise." The voice mocked him. "You mean you didn't know who you were chasing, Ryan? Hard to believe!"
"We've taken Towse."
"I warned the baron." The mockery was replaced by a deep bitterness. "Figured you might try and come back tonight. Once the ambush didn't work I knew you'd come back. Everyone knows the Trader's reputation where revenge is concerned."
From the voice, Ryan put the fleeing sec-boss at the corner of the church, near a side entrance to the ville.
"Wanna give up, Ferryman?"
The quiet laugh revealed genuine amusement. "Sure. The Trader shakes my hand, gives me a bootful of jack and wishes me luck."
Ryan wasn't ready to lie to the sec-boss. He didn't doubt that the Trader would shoot Ferryman dead at his feet if he caught him, a clean death by a bullet through the back of the head—if the Trader was feeling in a merciful mood.
At last Ryan had spotted him. Another pillar of reddish flames from behind him provided just enough light to pick out the pale blur of the sec-boss's face. He cocked the Ruger and leveled it carefully. But Ferryman realized the fire had revealed his position, and he pulled back out of sight, snapping off a shot at Ryan as he did.
"What sort of blaster you got?" Ryan shouted. "Sounds like a big .38, or mebbe a .45."
"Star Model PD, .45. Most compact man-stopper I ever had."
Ryan had heard of Star blasters, but he didn't know enough about them to know how many rounds the mag held. Ferryman wasn't likely to tell him.
"Why not just turn around and walk away, Ryan? Let it lie. Let me get a two-wheel and make a run for it. Nobody'll know."
"I'll know, Ferryman. Your baron tried to back shoot every man and woman in the war wags, including me. And you're his sec-boss."
Again the laugh, but this time it had an undertone of strain. "Yeah. Too much on the table 'tween us, ain't there? So what do we do?"
Behind him, Ryan heard the fourth of the catastrophic explosions as the ville self-destructed. The old church was at his shoulder, across the alley. If he could get inside, then he had a real chance of outflanking the sec-boss.
To think was to act. He powered himself off the wall, hearing the bullet whiz by within inches. Then he was safe inside the roofless building.
Now he could move the length of the nave, and he'd be in a position to hit the sec-boss from the shelter of the damaged wall by the alter.
But Ferryman was on his own turf, and he moved even faster.
Ryan never saw him. There was a triple explosion of shots and a pain that felt like fire across his lower ribs. He went down, unable to supress a gasp of shock.
Ferryman whooped in delight. "How'd you like them apples, outlander?"
Ryan's fighting instinct had enabled him to keep hold of his blaster. If it had dropped to the debris-strewn floor in the stygian gloom, he might never have found it again. With his left hand he cautiously explored the wound, feeling stickiness around where his shirt was torn. He gritted his teeth and probed deeper.
It was a long, lancing tear, but he couldn't feel an actual hole. The bleeding wasn't serious, and he crouched against the wall, ready to fight on.
There'd be time to treat it later—if there was going to be a later.
"You there, Cawdor?"
Another tremor and a fountain of flames threw the interior of the church into momentary stark relief.
Ferryman was caught, halfway down the aisle, cat-footing toward Ryan, his stubby automatic in his right fist. A tight smile was frozen on his lips.
At a range of a dozen paces, Ryan felt a surge of triumph, knowing he couldn't miss him. He fired three rounds without the sec-boss managing a single round in reply.
The flames from the burning building to the north of the ville gave enough light for Ryan to see that all three of his rounds had hit the man.
The first one, aimed as the stopper, caught him in the chest, high on the right side. The second one clipped Ferryman's right shoulder, his instinctive dive for cover nearly throwing Ryan's aim. But he instantly adjusted, and the final .357 round smashed into the falling man's face.
Ryan heard the beginnings of a scream, saw the Star .45 spin for a moment in the air, then hit the left-hand wall, yards away from where the sec-boss had gone down. Ryan didn't rush in, knowing that someone like Ferryman could easily have a hideaway somewhere on him—a small, concealed pistol, maybe a .22.
But his experience also told him that nobody could fake the sort of noises that were coming from the thrashing figure on the heap of rubbish. Three magnum rounds slowed a man down.
Ferryman was yelling, crying and choking. Ryan could hear cans tumbling and rattling, as well as bottles splintering. The sec-boss held both hands to his face, as if he were trying to hold it together. Ryan couldn't see clearly what damage that third bullet had done. He rose cautiously and took a couple of steps toward the stricken man, the Ruger preceding him, covering Ferryman.
The fire outside was dying down, and he noticed that the shooting had become even more sporadic. There was still enough light coming through the shattered windows, though, for him to see his victim.
The sec-boss was locked tight into his own nightmare world of pain and horror. He rocked from side to side like a child with a toothache, kicking out his legs in front of him, stiff, as though he were having a fit.
Through the clasped fingers, Ryan was able to see enough to appreciate the rending damage the last round had caused. From the blood on the man's chest, it was probable that the first bullet would be the one that eventually killed him.
But it was the last round that had destroyed him.
From what Ryan could make out, by the hellish glow of the burning ville, the bullet had hit the sec-boss as he was diving for cover. It had struck him on the left side, where the jaw articulates, below the cheek. Its progress then became random, but it had almost certainly smashed the joint, dislocated the jaw, angling sideways, and took out most of the upper teeth on that side. The splinters of bone would have shredded the tongue. The bullet, tumbling and distorted, must have gone spinning upward, ripping through the soft palate. Ferryman's left eye was missing from its bloodied socket, which meant the round had exited there, smashing the cheekbone again on its way out.
The frantic scrabbling and kicking was slowing down as the sec-boss became sucked into the mystery of his own ending.
Short of putting him out of the final misery, there was nothing Ryan could do—nothing that he wanted to do. The coup de grace bullet remained unfired beneath the hammer of the Blackhawk.
The entire ville was now covered in a smothering shroud of gas smoke, several fires blazing uncontrollably. The shooting had stopped, and some of the crew of War Wags One and Two were going around checking for anyone hiding from the Trader's righteous vengance. Bodies were being dragged into piles, and the wounded were be
ing treated.
The Trader was standing in the center of the plaza, with J.B. and a few of the senior crew members. Standing in front of him, arms folded, was Baron Alias Carson.
Ryan walked toward the group, knowing that the drama was nearly played out.
Chapter Thirty-Six
"FERRYMAN?"
Ryan flicked his right thumb downward in the universal gesture for someone chilled.
"He say anything about the fires?"
"No." He looked at Carson. "How about the baron? He start them?"
The Trader shook his head. "He's saying plenty of nothing."
The baron spoke in his slow, sardonic drawl. "Only thing I'm interested in right now is whether any of you terminal fools have a supply of an immortality drug. If not, then I guess I don't have too much to say."
J.B., his shirt torn from shoulder to wrist, looked at Ryan. "Seen anything of the baron's woman? She's not among the dead."
"No. I was sort of tangled with Ferryman. Got a crease across the ribs. We lose many?"
The Trader answered. "Too many." There was a wave of heat and shock as a building on the far side of the ville went up in flames. From the size of the explosion and the color of the flames, it was obviously a gas store. Fiery rubble cascaded across Towse, starting a dozen fresh fires. The Trader sucked on his lower lip. "Place is done. We're getting wounded together. I got a burial party standing by. Wags have been called in. It's over."
"How about him?" Ryan asked looking at Alias Carson, amazed that the man could be maintaining his cool.
"No time for a real job," the Trader replied. "Most of the sec-men are finished. Some others caught bullets. Blood price is paid."
Carson spoke. "The buildings go. Captains and kings depart. But the land remains, Trader. You and me can't do shit about that. Nothing else matters. The land's what matters."
Without comment, the Trader lifted the muzzle of his Armalite a few inches and shot the baron three times through the stomach and lower chest.
Alias Carson staggered back a dozen paces, glasses tumbling from his narrow nose. Blood marred the perfection of his light suit. His slender hands waved helplessly at the watching circle of men and women, and a low moan escaped from between his lips. He dropped to the ground, rolling onto his face in the trampled dust of his own ville. His body shuddered once then lay still.
"Talks like a baron. Walks like a baron. Acts like a baron. Dies just like you and me," the Trader said, shouldering the warm guri.
Dawn wasn't far off, though the skies around the burning ville were still dark. Only an occasional diamond star glittered coldly through the cirrus clouds. The two wags had come lumbering cautiously along the blacktop, manned by the skeleton crews and the lightly wounded. The shooting had virtually stopped. Hun put a last merciful bullet through the head of a woman she found hideously burned, crawling along a narrow alley, blinded, hairless, her scorched skin peeling off and trailing behind her like grotesque rags of vanished finery.
The bodies of the war wags' dead were already being buried in a shallow draw a hundred yards outside the adobe perimeter wall. The Trader's scouts reported a number of Indians standing patiently in the darkness of the desert, waiting for them to depart and allow them to reclaim their own.
Nobody had found the corpse of Sharona Carson, and it was assumed that she'd either managed to make an escape during the confusion of the raid or, more likely, was a burned and unidentified body in one of the ruined buildings.
Alone, Ryan wandered along the one flank of the ville, past the church where Ferryman's corpse still rested, looking back at the huddled mass of women and children who stood with their few possessions, watched by a couple of guards. The Trader had grudgingly agreed that the wags would escort them a few miles north, over the high bridge, to keep them from the vengeance of the Apaches. But then they'd be on their own, and there was a lot of wilderness to cover before the next ville. The war wags didn't carry passengers.
Smoke swirled around Ryan, making his eye water. He stopped near the entrance to the baron's two-wheel wag store—and heard someone cough, the noise nearly muffled. If he hadn't been standing right by the open door he'd never have heard it.
Ruger in hand, Ryan eased himself around the open door, trying to see who'd made the noise. The building had obviously once been an old stable for horses, years before sky-dark, and some of the partitions remained. The 350 twin Norton stood in the nearest stall, on its rest,
"Come out. You won't get hurt," Ryan shouted, raising his voice to compete with the crackling of the advancing flames.
"Knew you had a sense of humor, lover."
He couldn't see her, but he guessed she was hiding in the second or third compartment down.
"Come out, Sharona."
"Turn around and walk away from me."
"Why should I?"
"Got an eight-inch barrel on a .38 Colt Python that says it's a good idea."
"Six good ideas," Ryan agreed, straining his eye to try to see her position.
"Alias is dead." It wasn't a question, and Ryan didn't reply. "Stupe bastard. Could've been him who started the fires. If he couldn't take it with him, then I guess Alias didn't want anyone else to have it."
"Come out and join the other women. Trader'll see you all safe across the bridge."
The laughter sounded genuine. "Sure. Full of tricks like that, lover. Rather suck on the barrel of this friendly old Colt. No, thanks. I'll tell you how it is, Ryan."
"How is it, Sharona?"
"I get on that Norton hog and take my chances outside."
"I'll stop you."
"Then I'll shoot you down, lover. Sure, I'll grieve about it, but I'm not going to give in. Not my way."
"Be sorry to chill you."
She laughed again, but this time it was laced with tension. Behind her, the flames were hungrily devouring the roof, racing toward her hiding place.
"I could put six clean through your guts right now, Ryan."
The one-eyed man was uncomfortably aware that the woman was probably telling the truth. Silhouetted against the open doorway, at less than a dozen paces, he'd be hard to miss.
"Better do it. Pull down on the trigger. I'm not moving."
Suddenly Sharona stood before him, dressed only in jeans and a parka. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she wore no makeup, looking more beautiful than Ryan would have believed possible. He caught his breath.
"I mean it, Ryan," she said quietly. "I'm going to live. Not just for me. For…"
"For what?" he asked, puzzled.
"For… reasons. Real special reasons."
"That doesn't affect me."
She smiled. "That's where you're real wrong, Ryan. Real wrong."
"Still got to stop you."
"Why?"
"Man gives his word to his partner."
"Macho shit."
"Maybe."
"I'm going. Easy or hard, I'm getting out of here."
Ryan half lifted the Ruger, then lowered it again and slid the pistol back into its holster. Sharona Carson smiled, bolstered her own gun and stepped in close. She kissed him once, very lightly, on the cheek.
"Thanks, lover. Won't forget it. Won't forget you. Take care now. See you again one day."
There was a burst of sparks as the end wall fell, bringing down a sizable part of the roof. The woman swung her leg over the saddle of the Norton and kicked the motorcycle into life. Other than the blaster, it looked as if she wasn't taking anything with her.
Ryan stood back and watched the woman leave. The roar of the engine was engulfed by the noise of fires all around them, and nobody else saw the two-wheel wag leave the ville.
Ryan knew that he would never see her again. He also knew that he'd never forget her.
Two hours later, in the flushed light of full dawn, Sharona Carson braked the Norton and eased it to a stop. She was nearly sixty miles southwest of what remained of the once-proud ville of Towse. The road had been rough, and she'd twice be
en lucky to dodge attacks by bands of marauding Indians. Now she hefted the bike up on its rest and stretched.
Behind her, just visible as a gray smudge of smoke, fast disappearing into the clear morning sky, was Towse. By now she guessed that the Trader would have pulled out in convoy, moving north. The unburied corpses of Baron Alias Carson and his sec-forces would already be attracting the vultures and the ravening packs of coyotes. Ryan Cawdor was gone from her life, forever.
Before trucking on toward the far west, the woman sat down with her back against a boulder. The rock, chilled by the night, was just beginning to warm under the sun's heat. She felt a wave of sudden nausea and clasped both hands to her stomach.
Sharona had known almost from that first thrusting moment.
The sickness passed and she stood again, giving her past one final look before climbing once more onto the chromed Norton.
She gave a secret smile and patted her stomach, utterly content in the certainty of the new life and who its father was.
Sharona rode away from her past into her uncertain future.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
"WELCOME BACK, LOVER."
A blur blocked out the ceiling light. Someone stood over him, and a hand stroked his forehead. Red hair. A voice calling him "lover," that he thought he recognized.
"Sharona?" he tried to say, but his mouth and throat were still numb and wouldn't respond to his vocal bidding.
"Don't try and talk, lover. You've been triple-sick. Relax."
He blinked. The voice was a woman's, and she had red hair. Ryan felt obscurely proud of himself for working that out.
"Hun? That you?"
"Did he call you 'honey?'" Mildred asked, leaning anxiously over her patient.
"I don't think Ryan ever called me that," Krysty replied. "You don't think something's happened to his brain, do you?"
The black woman looked away. "I don't know, Krysty. All I know is that Ryan ate some poisoned food that gave him what I think was botulism. As far as I could tell, he was off to shake hands with the widow maker. His breathing and pulse were about as low as they can go without nailing the box down."