Hanging Judge

by James Axler

  “Now,” Cutter Dan said, turning back to the first man, whose sandy-bearded face was slack with shock and white behind its soot and grime. “I sure hope you know the Wild hereabouts better than this gentleman, my friend. What’s your name?”

  The man’s thick, callused hands quivered in the air by his shoulders as he looked down at his black-bearded companion. The man’s screams had turned to a visceral bubble of pain and sorrow.

  Cutter Dan cocked his handblaster with his thumb. “I asked you a question.”

  “Uh, Torrance. Sir.”

  “All right, Torrance. Now you see why you should help us, right? If you do, I don’t shoot you in the belly, too. Painful way to die. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen a lot.”

  He tapped the often-broken bridge of the man’s nose with the muzzle of his Smith & Wesson 627. The man’s pale green eyes blinked rapidly at the still-stinging heat of the blaster barrel.

  “And since I’m in such a generous mood,” the sec boss went on, “I’ll even put your friend here out of his misery as a bonus. But only if you help.”

  The man drew in a long, shuddery breath.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll help you. Now, please. Take care of poor Elliott.”

  “Right. Wise choice, Torrance.”

  He was a man of his word. A man was nothing if he wasn’t as good as his word. He holstered the Smith & Wesson and drew his trademark Bowie knife. Stooping, he cut the wounded man’s grimy, stubbly neck to the backbone with a single swift cut.

  Torrance fainted. Maybe it was the arterial spray of his best friend’s blood splashed across the shins of his faded jeans.

  Cutter Dan wiped his big blade carefully on the chill’s black coat. As he straightened, he sheathed it again.

  He looked down at the prostrate form of their new guide and shook his head.

  “I hope he’s not going to be such a lightweight on the hunt,” he said.

  “Mebbe he just don’t like the sight of blood,” Scovul stated.

  “Well, that could be a problem, too. Seeing as the object of this expedition is the shedding of blood. Though not too much, at least when it comes to our fugitives. We need to take ’em back to the Judge in presentable shape and not too drained out.”

  Yonas laughed. “Well, if he does turn out to be a weakling, you can always chill him, too, boss.”

  Cutter Dan shook his head.

  “We got severely limited time for these kinds of games, fun as they are,” he said. “Now, somebody throw a bucket of water over this simp and rouse him up. Those scofflaw coldhearts aren’t going to hang themselves.”

  * * *

  RYAN SPOTTED ANOTHER mutie standing up out of the thicket on the left. It held a spear poised to throw. Ryan snapped two quick shots at it from his P-226. He mostly intended to make it duck and spoil its aim. But he saw blood squirt from the left side of its narrow chest. It dropped the spear and fell squalling into the green tangle.

  “Ryan!”

  It was Ricky, shouting from right behind his back—meaning, ahead of him in line. By sheer reflex Ryan jumped left and forward into the shallow brook.

  A spear brushed his pack. Another mutie uttered a gargling cry from atop the bank to Ryan’s right. Then it came half tumbling, half sliding down the bare red slope.

  As Ryan watched it fall, he heard the clack-clack as Ricky threw the bolt of his silenced DeLisle. It really was silent—the action working was far louder than the actual shot had been.

  That was old news. Ryan was far more interested in the creature descending toward him in an increasing tangle of limbs. It was bigger than he thought. The body was the size of a big dog or a small man. Its tail was about as long, bringing it to roughly nine feet in length, total. The reason he’d thought it smaller was that it seemed built to carry its body horizontally, not upright like a human.

  Its body wasn’t bare skin or scales, either. It was covered with what looked like small feathers, judging from the way the mud made it spike up. The creature came to rest with big taloned feet in the air. The feet did have scales, yellow ones, and each sported a single, much bigger claw higher than the rest. The open mouth was full of knife-tip teeth. The wide-open eye staring Ryan’s way was yellow.

  “Wow,” Ricky breathed. “With teeth and claws like that, why would they even need spears?”

  He yelped as Ryan hopped toward him and caught him with a powerful sidekick in the hip. It threw the boy sprawling in the wet grass.

  “Why’d you—?” Ricky began to yell in outrage even before he stopped sliding on his side. Then his eyes got big and his mouth shut as another spear stuck into the grass right where he’d been standing.

  “They need spears to throw at stupes like you who stand there making targets of themselves,” Ryan said, turning and loosing a shot. The spear caster ducked out of sight. “Now, move!”

  The shower of hurled objects continued as J.B. led them back up the ravine, less dense, but containing more of the metal-tipped spears. Ryan saw flashes of the strange lizardlike creatures moving fluidly through the growth at the tops of the walls. He suspected their powerful, clawed hind feet gave them the ability to run along the thicker vines.

  He could hear them chirping and screeching at one another. It was like being hunted by a cross between a wolf pack and a flock of crows.

  The companions couldn’t outrun their mutie pursuit, it seemed. But they were thinning it out. The pursuers were getting strung out along the cliffs. And the companions were popping occasional shots their way to make things as rough on them as possible.

  Ryan guessed that was likely why the muties had started throwing their precious spears again—to keep their prey from getting away. Those that missed—all of them so far, anyway—they could easily come back and retrieve later, when this was done one way or another.

  “We’re going this way, Ryan!” he heard Mildred call.

  He looked around. J.B. was leading the group up a gully that joined the main line from the northeast. To his relief he judged they were still well shy of the place where they’d left the monster centipedes to devour the wild hog alive.

  “Right,” he said. He turned and started running to catch up to his friends, who had pulled away. Watching their back trail was suddenly no longer the top priority.

  Seeing that their prey had veered away from half their pursuers, the feathered-lizard muties chittered in rage. J.B. suddenly stopped and turned to his left, his Uzi in his hands.

  “Up the bank,” he called to the others. “Lay down some righteous cover fire.”

  He ripped three quick bursts into the vines on the northwest gulch bank. Ryan doubted many of the dispersed pack had caught up yet—that was their only real shot at getting clear, in fact. But he heard a squawk, followed by thrashing among the thorn-laced leaves.

  Krysty, Doc and Mildred obeyed. This bank sloped at a more shallow angle than the walls of the canyon they’d quitted. But the slick red surface was treacherous, with only a few sprouts sticking out to give them something to grab on to. And they were heavily loaded down by their weapons and the backpacks, and the soles of their boots were well caked with wet clay that reduced purchase to near zero.

  But they were strong and they were motivated. They were survivors. They made their way up, painfully and haltingly, but steadily.

  And now they had Ryan to protect them, as well as J.B. He paused a few yards up the new cut to point his handblaster with both hands at the northwest bank.

  A mutie reared out of the growth, ready to throw a spear. Its head was a big target from the side so he aimed for that. His first bullet punched through its snout behind its nostrils. As it whistled in agony the second bullet hit the membranous patch behind the yellow eye that Ryan guessed was its ear and blew its brains out the side of its narrow skull. The spray of blood and chunks lo
oked black against the lowering sky.

  J.B. ripped another burst into the vines. Then Ryan realized Ricky wasn’t following the others. He was standing a little way up from Ryan, pointing his fat-barreled blaster at the far bank.

  “Get going!” Ryan shouted.

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Move!”

  Ricky faltered. He lowered his weapon, not seeing any targets, anyway.

  It was a good thing that he did. A spearhead thunked into the wooden stock just ahead of his trigger finger. The shaft was painted in bright rings and a clump of feathers shook behind the steel head. Ryan couldn’t identify them; they looked too long to have come from one of these muties.

  J.B. fired a 3-round burst. Ricky yelped. He ripped the spear out of his weapon with a frenzied heave. Then, resourcefulness winning out over triple-stupe childhood heroics and terror alike, he dropped the blaster to hang by its sling, turned and used the spearhead to dig into the clay slope and help him scramble up to join his friends disappearing into the vine skein above.

  Ryan turned back. A mutie was sliding down the other bank with blood spurting from its chest and a feather-furred arm. It looked as if J.B.’s jacketed 9 mm bullets had rendered it not much of a threat.

  But more of the lizard creatures had arrived. They set up a clamor like a bunch of crows disturbed from sleep in an abandoned attic. A shower of spears and pieces of vine the size of Ryan’s arm came cartwheeling toward him and J.B.

  The one-eyed man sidestepped a spear, batted away a spiked wood chunk, then ducked another. J.B. ripped the growth with full-auto fire.

  “J.B., go!” Ryan called to him.

  The Armorer didn’t hesitate. He turned and rabbited up the bank, as well. Following his apprentice’s clever example, he let the machine pistol hang from its sling and used the synthetic buttstock of his M-4000 scattergun to help him up the slippery slope.

  Flashes stabbed from the tangle above, bright yellow in the gloom. Blasterfire pounded Ryan’s eardrums. The three companions who’d gone ahead had found cover and opened up.

  Ryan turned to climb the slope. He’d just have to trust to the big bulky pack hulked up over his shoulders to protect him from a spear in the back. It left his legs exposed, but that was life in the Deathlands, where the only certainty was that it would end with you staring up at the stars.

  He stuffed his SIG hurriedly away and pulled out his panga. Its heavy, broad blade wasn’t meant to be used as a razor, and anyway he could always hone it—if he lived. He started jabbing it into the thick, heavy clay to help him make his way up.

  Before he’d gone a third of the way, he sensed something scrambling up to his left. He turned his head to see a lizard mutie overtaking him, climbing on all fours, using his long, curving, birdlike claws to help. The thing might have been lucky or bastard smart, Ryan thought, coming up on his blindside like that. Given the craft with which they made their primitive weapons and the way the pack communicated, he reckoned it was the smart thing.

  The creature whistled in fury and snapped at his face. Its face was the size of a big timber wolf’s and was filled with teeth and malice.

  Ryan’s panga was in his right hand; its blade was buried in the dirt. He jerked his head right. At the same time he launched a left-hand punch that was half hook, half uppercut. It caught the side of the mutie’s wide-open lower jaw. Ryan felt bones crunch as the creature’s head torqued to the side.

  But it wasn’t done. Screaming shrilly, the mutie turned back to him with his jaw askew. It slashed at him with the claws of its left hand.

  Ryan jerked the panga free and swung it hard. The fat blade caught the feathered limb midforearm. Skin, flesh and bones parted, easier than a human’s would have. The thing was built light.

  But it was a predator and extremely tough. Despite its broken face and blood-spurting stump, it dug in its remaining three limbs and hurled itself at Ryan. He could hear its pack mates trilling triumph now; all it needed to do was slow him up another heartbeat or two.

  “Nuke that,” Ryan grunted, as he swung the panga overhand to meet its rush. The blade caught it at the left-hand juncture of neck and chest and caved its ribs in as much as cut into it. The mutie collapsed with a ghastly whistling wheeze.

  Ryan’s blade came free easily, though coated in gore. He plunged it back into the clay and went up the bank fast.

  Not fast enough. Just as he saw the green profusion of the thicket erupt a few feet from his face—a welcome sight despite the wicked thorns all those leaves hid—a heavy weight landed on his back.

  It slammed him, face first, into the mud. The muties might have had light bones, but they were still big. It was as if a man had jumped on him.

  He felt a pain in his left side. The bastard thing was raking his short ribs with its long claws. He suddenly realized the purpose: in a matter of seconds it’d be tearing his guts out. He tried to push himself up, turning his head to stare rage-filled defiance into a pair of triumphantly glaring yellow eyes.

  One of which suddenly vanished in a spray of blood and aqueous fluid. The sound of the handblaster going off not far from Ryan’s head was thunderous.

  With half its head blown off, the mutie fell away. Ryan, ears ringing, launched himself in a final furious spasm of effort.

  He hurled himself toward a reaching, pale-skinned hand—and the world’s most heart-stoppingly beautiful face.

  “Come to me, lover,” Krysty said. “I got you.”

  Chapter Ten

  Why not? Jak thought.

  The ville on the edge of the Wild was small but neat. Neater than Second Chance, anyway.

  Not that that was saying much.

  The evening was coming down under a sky that had largely cleared, except for big black-and-bloody bands of sunset clouds to the west. He watched from the shadow of some trees as lights came on in the settlement. The ville lay on the north edge of the Wild, where the freakishly wet weather conditions that allowed the mutie thorn thicket to grow in such insane density gradually gave way to the drier climate of the hard-core Deathlands, what Doc and Mildred said used to be called the Great Plains.

  Apparently people in the transition zone around the Wild fought robustly against the encroachment of the mutie thorn plants, incursions by the mutie wildlife that thrived inside them and raids from the coldhearts and the desperate people who wandered there, outlanders who sought a better life. The payoff was high: all that extra rain provided good growing conditions.

  Jak could see that the borders of the Wild were packed tight with farmlands, already well filled with green crops even though it was only spring. The number of obviously derelict homes, burned-out shells he sometimes spotted while inside the thicket, told Jak that the settlers didn’t always win those fights.

  This ville clearly benefited from all that produce, as well the fact that it lay on a road that led directly through Second Chance. But he also knew full well that that was as much a curse as a blessing. During his brief captivity in the ungentle hands of that crazy Judge Santee’s self-proclaimed U.S. Marshals, he had heard them joking about how someday soon they’d add that ville to their list of conquests. They seemed to look forward to it. Only the fact that it was relatively far away had held them back, he gathered.

  Why do this? a voice asked inside his head. Why not stay free?

  He shook his head. He hated that voice sometimes.

  “Am free,” he muttered under his breath. “Run where want, when want.” He saw no more purpose in wasting words or even syllables than he had when running with...his former pack. In fact, it was growing up a lone wolf that gave him the habit of saying as little as possible to achieve communication and often less.

  Anyway, it wasn’t as if he was lonely. Not him. Not the White Wolf of the Louisiana bayous. Nuke fire, he’d hardly been gone from his former
companions a couple days.

  But he did have some ammo in his pocket for trade, and a growling hunger in his belly that, until he learned the local edible plants and the local game and its habits, he was going to have to check out the ville.

  Plus, he had a thirst for something other than water.

  Jak stepped out from behind his sycamore tree. His pack was cached somewhere safe and dry, of course. He’d be able to bolt if trouble happened, and vanish in the woods where no ville rat would find him. And if trouble got too pushy, he had his camouflage jacket sewn with sharp bits of glass and metal to encourage people to keep their hands to themselves, his knives to carve himself an exit. And the big Colt Python blaster.

  The blaster was strictly for emergencies. He did love to use his knives. Feeling an enemy’s blood gush hot over your knuckles as you did him was the essence of what being a human predator was all about.

  He squared his shoulders and—despite the disquiet that stirred in the recesses of his flat gut whenever he approached civilization—strode toward the yellow lights of the ville as if he owned the place and was coming to collect back rent.

  * * *

  “IT’S A MATTER of justice, Your Honor,” the man in the khaki overalls said.

  Judge Santee sat in his gloomy cave of an office in the bowels of the courthouse. Toogood saw him drum his spidery fingers on the surface of his book-and document-cluttered desk. Once. Twice. Then he crossed a long leg over the other.

  “Justice is my business,” he said in his dry rasp of a voice. “Explain yourself, if you will, Mr. Down.”

  His pale blue eyes met the Judge’s squarely and without flinching. At least, so far as Toogood could see, standing behind Santee’s shoulder. Not many could do as much, he had to admit. Down was a technician of some sort for Gein: a solid blond man of middle years.

  “The people feel that simple justice demands that the laws that govern us be made public,” he said.

  “Which people, Mr. Down?”