by James Axler
Ryan grunted at the thought. It was better than passively waiting for death and better than chilling yourself.
Or Cutter Dan could reach the end of his patience rope, say fuck it, and order a balls-to-the-wall attack. Especially if it was true he was pulling in reinforcements from somewhere. Faced with a massive assault, the trapped men would run out of ammo soon enough.
Worst of all, for all of them—Ryan and J.B. in particular—was the knowledge that their women were being held prisoner by the maniac Judge Santee. The certainty that the bastard would keep them alive and intact until he had captured the four men, or at least until Cutter Dan brought their heads back, wasn’t so certain anymore. Obsessed as Santee was with watching people swing and inflicting the maximum psychological pain as a sort of dessert topping, the one thing that could be truly predicted about a lunatic was that he would be...unpredictable.
Sooner or later we’re going to have to try to break out, Ryan thought. But put their heads together though they might, they so far hadn’t been able to come up with a plan that seemed like anything but throwing their lives away. And the lives of Krysty and Mildred. Even J.B., that master of traps and tricks, kept drawing blanks.
Ryan frowned.
Nuke that kind of thinking, he thought. Something’ll come up. It always does. That’s one good thing about this fucked-up world: things are always changing in ways nobody can predict.
And if nothing does come up, no opportunities arise, they’d find a way to make them happen. Because that’s what they did.
The one-eyed man had the rifle propped on his rolled-up coat. Instead of holding the foregrip as usual, his left hand rested across the buttstock. Now he used it to snug the weapon firmly against his shoulder while he drew a deep breath.
The sec man stopped, hunkered down. He looked left and right, and then, as if sensing he was being watched, which Ryan’s own experience had proved again and again was a thing a man could actually do, he turned his face toward the cliffs. And slowly, reluctantly, he raised his head until he was staring right at Ryan.
“Say goodbye,” Ryan growled. Then he caught and held his remaining breath and squeezed the trigger.
The longblaster bucked up. Ryan cycled the action and drew it back down. With an expert’s touch he returned it to almost the exact position it had been when he fired.
The man’s head was still centered in the reticule, but it had snapped back, and a pink cloud was still fanned out behind it. The cloud began to fall out of the air like fine rain as the sec man collapsed bonelessly.
“Can’t let you boys get too complacent,” Ryan said. He slithered backward out of position, tugging his coat with him. When he was down out of sight from below, he got up to a crouch and duck-walked off to another of the vantage points he and J.B. had scoped out.
Ryan and company couldn’t afford to get complacent, either. They weren’t the only ones in the Deathlands with scoped longblasters—or the skill to use them.
* * *
WITH NOTHING BETTER to do, Krysty and Mildred were sleeping away the early evening wait for the dinner that would be brought by their jailers. Then Krysty was wakened by the clatter of a key turning in the lock in the cell door.
She snapped instantly awake, fast enough that she kept herself from stirring. She continued to lie on her side on the straw mattress, pretending to be asleep.
Mildred happened to be lying on her side facing Krysty. The redhead saw her friend’s eyes open just a slit. A slight nod told her Mildred knew she was awake, as well.
It wasn’t their evening meal. The jailer usually banged with a truncheon on the bars in the window in the heavy wood door to warn them to stand back before opening it to set down their trays. This was something else.
As the door began to open, Krysty went ahead and swung her legs down to sit up. She didn’t see any point in trying to play possum. The action caused a pain to shoot down the outside of her right thigh, which was bandaged beneath her jeans.
The door was flung wide abruptly, accompanied by the harsh call of, “Stand back or get beat down.”
A woman was shoved through, struggling furiously, to sprawl on the concrete floor.
Krysty and Mildred jumped to their feet. A fresh mattress was tossed in, to land on top of the new arrival. She lay dazed, with her palms on the concrete and her body slightly raised.
“What’s going on?” Krysty demanded.
A pale face sneered from beneath a shock of black hair. It was Evrard. They had already discovered that he had been told to stay in Second Chance rather than return to the hunt for Ryan and the others.
“Got somebody to keep you bitches company,” he said. Evrard had at least another pair of burly sec men. Armed with clubs, backing him up. Krysty suspected at least a couple more were out of sight in the corridor. “Don’t go getting too attached.”
Laughing nastily, he closed and locked the door.
Mildred knelt beside the woman to help her up. “Let me get a look at you,” she said.
But the woman shook her off. Or girl—she couldn’t have been older than twenty. Krysty watched as she rose. She swayed, slightly. She steadied herself briefly with a hand on the shoulder of Mildred, who stood up with her. She nodded thanks to the healer, then marched to the door.
“You bastards!” she shouted out the little barred window. “Your time is coming! The people of Second Chance have had enough of your cruelty and lies! You can chill me, but you can’t chill the truth!”
Mildred looked to Krysty and raised an eyebrow. “What’s that mean, exactly?” she more mouthed than said.
Krysty shrugged. “Who knows? But she’s certainly on a roll.”
“You’ve trampled our faces in the mud for too long! And we’re not going to take it any more! We’re going to rise up and pull you down!”
At least a dozen other voices joined in. “Yeah! Pull you down! The day of reckoning is coming, you coldheart bastards.”
“Enough!” bellowed a voice that was way too loud and authoritative to come from Evrard.
“Shut your filthy traitorous yaps or we’ll make you pay!” That definitely was Evrard.
“Don’t let them silence you!” the woman screamed out the cell-door window.
Then she sprang back so rapidly she lost her balance. She would’ve fallen and given the back of her skull a nasty crack on the hard floor if Krysty hadn’t stepped up and caught her. Krysty let her injured leg fold beneath her, but under control, easing the two down.
As she did, Krysty saw the end of a truncheon jab through the bars where their new cell-mate’s face had been.
“Let her go!” the other prisoners were clamoring. “Let us go! Nuke Santee and his bullshit justice!”
“I said enough!” the bull-voiced man roared. The other prisoners were shocked into silence.
Before they could get started again, Evrard said, “Shut your filthy holes. And keep ’em shut or we’ll drag a few of you taints out and string you up.”
After a moment’s shocked silence, a young man’s voice said, “You wouldn’t dare! Santee’s asleep by now. Everybody knows he goes to bed at sunset. He’d make you swing for hanging anybody without him getting to watch, and you don’t dare wake him up!”
The sec men laughed hoarsely.
“That shows what you know, gallows-bait,” Evrard said. “You don’t know the Judge, and that’s a stone fact. He’d get up off his deathbed to watch a hanging at midnight in midwinter!”
That seemed to end the discussion. The newcomer collapsed onto the floor.
Mildred knelt by her again. “She’s been roughed up pretty bad,” she said, examining the woman, who now seemed stunned but was responding. “Something big must have gone down. From how we were treated, I’d say Santee doesn’t like getting his play-toys smudged or bent. He wants them l
ooking nice and neat when they’re twisting in the wind.”
“That may not be helping, Mildred.”
“Sorry.” Mildred helped the woman onto her mattress and got her laid down on her back. “My bedside manner always sucked. There’re reasons I didn’t go into practice but stuck to research, instead.” Krysty wasn’t sure it was a joke.
Using water from the big bucket they’d been provided and rags that were still clean, Krysty and Mildred got the blood wiped from under the woman’s nose and got her generally refreshed. She sat up, smoothed her short, black hair away from her face, smiled at them, and nodded.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m Sharleez Down. My father was Sam Down. Used to work as boss millwright for that rich bastard Gein. Until Santee had him hanged for daring to try and beg for better treatment for the people of Second Chance. Whom Santee and his cronies treat like animals. We’d be better off if we were actual slaves. They’d value us at least a little, then.”
She was a good-looking young woman, Krysty thought. Brown skin, dark eyes. Medium height. Strong build without much extra. She was a bit too strong featured to be called pretty, but perhaps the passion that knotted her brow and turned her lips to near-white compression lines had something to do with that.
And also the black eyes and puffiness from having been beaten. At least she’d stopped bleeding.
“I’m Krysty Wroth,” she said. “This is Mildred Wyeth. She’s a skilled healer. You’re in good hands.”
“Thank you,” Sharleez said. “Kindness to strangers isn’t something you find everywhere these days.”
“You just have to know where to look,” Mildred said archly.
The young woman laughed, briefly but heartily. She had spirit, Krysty thought.
She looked around with her brows furrowed in puzzlement.
“When Santee told his goons to take me off to the cells I was expecting something, well...”
“Dirtier?” Mildred said.
“Yeah. Among other things. More bugs in the bedding. Less, well, comfortable bedding. That sort of thing.”
“It’s one of the nicest cells we’ve ever been in,” Krysty said. “We get decent food and enough of it, and plenty of water for all kinds of needs.”
Sharleez looked at her strangely.
“You two spend a lot of time in jail cells? I mean, you don’t look the type.”
Mildred chuckled. “Looks can be deceiving, girl. We’ve been in some of the worst. And to tell the truth, plenty of gaudy-house rooms that were way worse than this.”
Sharleez shook her head. “But why? Santee’s such a harsh, cold man. No, not cold. Cruel. So why would he treat his condemned prisoners so well?”
“That,” Mildred said. “We’re his condemned prisoners.”
“You’ve seen Santee’s public executions,” Krysty said.
Sharleez dropped her eyes. “Yes, I have. They try to make everyone attend. It’s impossible to avoid all the time. And all his executions are public. My—my father’s was an exception. There was no advance notice. It was a spur of the moment thing, apparently.”
Krysty and Mildred sat in silence for a moment.
“Santee loves to put on a show,” Mildred said. “He doesn’t want to hang unsightly victims as part of his twisted morality play. You’ve noticed, haven’t you?”
Sharleez frowned, then nodded. “I guess I have, yeah. I just haven’t thought about...what that really meant. I just didn’t want to think about Santee and his goons doing anything...nice.”
Mildred snorted a laugh. “Nothing ‘nice’ about it, girl. He does it for him, not us.”
“What brought you here?” Krysty asked. “Speaking out against your father’s murder?”
“No,” Sharleez said. “Although it would have. Because I was finding it harder and harder to hold my tongue in public. Even though I knew it was vital to our cause.”
“Your cause?” Mildred asked.
“Freeing Second Chance from Santee’s tyranny. I’ve been working secretly for that for months.”
“I’m surprised you’re not in worse shape, then,” Krysty said.
“Oh, this?” Sharleez touched her face, then winced. “That happened when they were arresting us. I tried to make them shoot me, actually, but they used the other end of a longblaster on me, instead.”
“They didn’t interrogate you?” Mildred asked.
“Oh, sure. But they don’t do physical stuff. That’s not Santee’s style—or even that bastard Cutter Dan’s. They go in for intimidation, threats, psychological torture.” She shrugged. “And the Judge doesn’t want to damage his show pieces, just like you said.”
“Who betrayed you?” Krysty asked.
Sharleez uttered a bitter laugh like a fox bark. “That obvious, huh? Rad-scum named Kreg Modeen. Thought he was the best. He was the worst, instead. He led the sec men right to us this afternoon. They chilled Andi and Jeth. Took me and two others prisoner.”
She shook her head. “Wish I knew what they paid him.”
“Mebbe the lives of his loved ones,” Krysty said.
“Mebbe,” Sharleez agreed. “But it doesn’t let him off for what he’s done. Not just to us. To Second Chance.”
“What do you mean?” Krysty asked.
“See, that’s the double shame of it. Triple. We were getting so close to being able to move. Lots of people in this ville are ready to act, whatever the risks. And they chopped the head off, all nice and neat. One cut.”
“I’m surprised Santee didn’t make an exception in his no-torture rule, then,” Mildred said. “Get at all the juicy details. Make sure of nipping this rebellion in the bud.”
“You don’t understand how utterly arrogant the man is. He believes his own line of rad-waste. And he believes in the ‘moral lessons’ his murderous so-called justice teaches. The power to cow the people into submission.”
She shrugged.
“And you know what? He’s probably right. When they hang the three of us tomorrow morning, it’ll probably put the whole resistance down. For months, mebbe years.
“So, you know, it’s funny in a sad way that bastard said not to get too attached to me. It’s not like you’ll have time to.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Krysty looked at Mildred. “That settles it,” she said. “It has to be tonight, then.”
Mildred could hardly believe her ears. She tipped her head sideways toward the new arrival and rolled her eyes in her direction.
“Should we be discussing this sort of thing—you know?”
“Why not?” Krysty asked.
“Well, how much do we really know about our new friend here? Can we trust her? Why should we?”
“Why wouldn’t we? We’re condemned. She’s condemned. We’re all kind of in the same boat, here.”
“But what if she reckons she can, like, trade information for freedom?”
“I’m right here, you know,” Sharleez said stiffly.
“No offense, hon,” Mildred said, “but we don’t want to make the same mistake you did, that landed you here in our plush accommodations with us.”
“What information could she or anybody else possibly hope to gain?” Krysty asked. “We already told them we have no idea where Jak went after we broke him free of the gallows. And the last we knew of the whereabouts of Ryan and the rest was when the marshals caught us. What would Santee plant an informer on us for? He probably knows more about where our menfolk are than we do.”
Mildred sighed. “Just can’t be too careful,” she said, then realized that was just as lame as it sounded.
She realized Sharleez Down was staring from one to the other with saucer eyes.
“You’re them,” she breathed.
“By definition,” Mildred said.
“For appropriate values of ‘them.’”
“The ones who broke their friend the albino kid free from the gallows!”
“Don’t let him hear you call him ‘kid,’” Mildred muttered. “He’s a grown-ass man.”
“The ones who defied Judge Santee and all his sec men, and lived to get away! The only ones ever. And put a scar on the face of his sec boss, Cutter Dan Sevier! You’re—wait! Don’t tell me! It was you two in the wag, all swaddled up like mourners? The ones who threw the smoke bombs!”
“Guilty,” Mildred said. “In fairness to Judge Stick-It-Up-His-Ass, he doesn’t only hang innocent people.”
Suddenly Sharleez put her face in her hands and began to cry. She moaned and sobbed disconsolately. Her whole body shook.
Mildred and Krysty stared at her in astonishment. The physician would have been worried about the sudden outburst attracting the guards’ attention. Except it probably wasn’t exactly an unusual event here on Death Row.
“What?” she asked. “What did we do that’s so much worse than you being sentenced to—that is, here.”
Sharleez struggled visibly and eventually fought her emotions under control.
“Not you,” she said, panting as if she’d run a mile with a mutie panther on her tail. “Me. Us. With you joining us the resistance’s morale would shoot through the roof! You’d inspire everyone! But here, my friends and I are going to die tomorrow. And you will, too, whenever they catch your friends. So here you are, turning up when everything’s hopeless—”
She spiraled promptly back into tears.
Krysty laid a strong, gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Listen to me, Sharleez,” she said, pitching her voice low so it wouldn’t carry. “You and your friends aren’t going to die tomorrow. At least, not at the ends of nooses, and we aren’t either.”
Sharleez looked up, her face red, her eyes even puffier than the butt of the longblaster had left them.
“Are you crazy? We’re locked in a cell with bars on the windows and an immovable door. We’re not getting out of here ever again. Until they come to take us to the gallows.”