by James Axler
“I’d let you know. But we need to get you back downstairs fast.”
“What’s the rush?” Krysty asked, standing slowly and stretching.
“To talk Sharleez and the other resistance types down off the ledge.”
Mildred wouldn’t explain as she led Krysty down the stairs by candlelight. “So what’d I miss sleeping all day?” she asked.
“Just what you thought,” Mildred said. “Nothing. But Sharleez and her core group have been sending out feelers all day, trying to find out how much actual support they can muster when the shit hits the fan. That and arguing strategy. Watch the step, there, it’s loose.”
Krysty hesitated just before they reached the landing and the stair switched back. “Thanks.”
“One good thing is, we’re not getting too much of the usual ‘can’t we just get along’ crap. Especially since that trick of yours last night got pulled off so brilliantly. Now that they helped chilled five sec men—and one lousy snitch—all without getting anybody on our side more than mildly dinged, most of the people we were finding such a hard sell have turned into aspiring blood drinkers. Now they know the marshals can be beaten.”
“We got lucky,” Krysty said.
“Yeah. You know that they say it’s best to be lucky and good. And we’re going to need to be both, starting right about now.”
“Why, Mildred? Why won’t you just tell me?”
They’d reached the bottom of the stairs. Mildred led them out into the center part of the church, where a few pews that hadn’t been salvaged for lumber actually remained. Krysty thought she’d read they called that part the nave.
“Because I thought it’d be easier to just let them,” she said. “That way you don’t have to listen to it twice. And believe me, they’re going to want to tell you all about it themselves.”
A clump of people stood talking in low but clearly excited voices in the middle of the open space. It was dark except for the light streaming in the windows and the open door.
A man’s voice rose above the barely suppressed clamor. “But clearly, it’s all over now!” he exclaimed. “We’re beaten. This ends it. The whole thing!”
“For crap’s sake, Quent!” a woman hissed in exasperation. “Keep your voice down, will you?”
“What difference does it make, Candace?” Quent said, still too loud. “If there are any sec men close enough to hear me, that means they’re already surrounding us!”
He stopped and looked around. By the pallor on his face, already drained of color by the faint light, and the size of his eyes, Krysty judged he had succeeded in spooking himself.
“What’s going on?” she asked calmly.
Everybody turned to look at her.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” Sharleez said. She hurried over to the two women.
“We need to be either figuring out the best way to make a deal,” Quent said, his voice rising more shrill and strident than before, “or running away as fast as we can! It’s over, people!”
Mildred stepped up to him. He was half a head taller, but she stood almost touching him and tipped her head back.
“Shut it,” she said in a low, deadly voice. “Or I’ll put my fist in it.”
Despite Quent’s height advantage, Mildred looked solid enough—and angry enough—to snap him like a twig. Evidently Quent thought so, too. He shut his mouth and hunched his head down between his shoulders like a turtle regretting that it had forgotten to wear its shell.
Krysty nodded. “Just tell me, simply and quietly, what happened, please.”
She really didn’t have any standing with these people, except as mysterious possible liberator. And maybe that red-headed witch, according to the people whom she’d helped break out of jail the night before last. She trusted those stories had been written off as overwrought exaggerations.
That didn’t leave her with much to back up her authority. But Sharleez, by far the dominant personality Krysty had seen in the group, stood with her. So she reckoned calm, confident command was the tone most likely to do some good.
Several people started talking at once. Sharleez held up her hand. The voices cut off.
Quent frowned behind his glasses and shifted his weight from foot to foot. Mildred gave him her most furious glare. He shuffled right to the back of the pack and tried hard to look inconspicuous.
“It’s Santee,” Sharleez said. “Of course. He’s made his response. He had his marshals round up twenty citizens of the ville at random. He’s holding them hostage.”
“He says he’s going to hang them!” a woman whose voice Krysty didn’t recognize said. Her voice started to rise. Her eyes got bigger and she stopped talking.
“He says we have until dawn tomorrow to turn ourselves in,” Sharleez said. “Then he’ll hang four of them. If we haven’t surrendered, half an hour later he’ll hang four more. And so on.”
“What happens if he runs out of hostages?” Mildred asked. “I never got that part.”
Sharleez’s brow knotted like a fist. She was clearly having trouble holding her rage in check. But she was, which Krysty felt was promising.
“Then he’ll have his sec men round up more,” she said through clenched teeth.
Krysty looked around the six or seven others gathered inside the former church. She saw lots of glints of starlight on eyeballs and postures of defeat or near terror.
“And who exactly does he demand give themselves up?” she asked.
“You and Mildred,” Sharleez said. “Alyssa, Niles. Me. But also a bunch of unspecified people Cutter Dan’s deputy marshal, Suazo, calls ‘ringleaders.’”
“It wasn’t exactly Suazo,” said a young woman who stood to one side diffidently. Obviously she didn’t feel included in this group. There seemed to be class divisions within the resistance, too.
As usual.
“He mostly stood there all puffed up and trying to look important, while the proclamation was delivered by that fat bastard, Mayor Toogood.”
“This is Norah,” Sharleez said. “She’s the one who brought the word, just now. She was there.”
“I saw a fat guy who sat through the commotion last time we were here. Is that him?” Mildred asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“He’s the mayor? What’s he doing playing ring announcer for Judge Santee’s favorite spectator sport?”
“He likes keeping himself in the public eye,” one of the men said. His voice was deeper than Quent’s, as well as calmer. “Just plain likes attention.”
“And he’s ambitious,” Sharleez said. “He’s the least well-off of the four—uh, make that three, now—rich folk who run Second Chance along with Santee. So I guess he’s trying to court popularity.”
“While telling the ville folks all about why the Judge is about to hang their friends and loved ones,” Mildred said. “That ought to go over well.”
“So, to start with,” Krysty said, “you’ve got an open-ended threat. Looks to me as if the Judge has granted himself unlimited license to just go on hanging innocent townspeople until he decides every malcontent in Second Chance has turned herself or himself in.”
The others looked at her as if they hadn’t even thought of that. For people living under such a heavy-handed, brutal regime, the ville’s citizens were not good at the whole conspiracy thing.
That was not her and Mildred’s problem. Krysty felt bad that they were using the ville folk, but it didn’t mean either of them would stop.
They might help the oppressed citizens win at least a shot at a better future or bring them unqualified disaster. Either way, as long as they and the other companion got out of it alive, they’d all sooner or later just shake the dust of the place from their heels, and never look back.
It wasn’t pleasant; it was survival. It always was abo
ut survival.
“Please,” Quent said, overcome by emotion. He did keep his voice down this time. “You have to understand. We can’t do this. Santee has won. It’s checkmate, game over.”
“Really?” Mildred said. “You planning on turning yourself in, Quent?”
“Well, let us say I am not the most prominent figure in our underground freedom movement.”
“Not for lack of you telling everybody how you ought to be in charge all the time,” Candace stated.
“Please,” Sharleez said. The commotion the group was starting to generate again died just like that.
The young woman was speaking to Krysty. “What can we do? I got into this to save the people of Second Chance from Santee’s butchery, not to speed up how fast he hangs them.”
“We have two choices,” Krysty said. “One, we can all give ourselves up like good little boys and girls, and spend the rest of our short, unhappy lives wondering who’s going to the gallows next.”
That produced a leaden silence from the entire group, including Quent.
“And, of course, trusting Santee to keep his word.”
She let that sink in. But only for a moment. “Or we can realize that we have nothing to lose.”
“What do you mean?” Quent asked, getting loud again. He oofed as someone elbowed him in the ribs.
“She means that we’re as good as dead already,” Sharleez said in a flat, hard voice. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” Krysty agreed. “So, given that fact, it couldn’t be clearer what we need to do.”
“Don’t leave us hanging,” the deeper-voiced man said. “To use an unfortunate term. What do we do?”
She smiled brightly around at them all.
“Attack.”
* * *
“WHAT TIME IS IT?”
Yawning, rubbing sleep from his eyes with his left hand, Ricky lumbered out of the red-clay cave. His right hand held his DeLisle. He might be the youngest of the group, but he was still going to show that he belonged with these people.
That meant being ready for action at any time. No matter what the circumstances.
A low fire of dry brush crackled in the center of the ledge before the cave. It was positioned where nobody could see its glow from below. The only higher vantage was at the top of the cliffs, and if Ryan and J.B. weren’t concerned about anybody spotting it from up there, neither was Ricky.
The two men sat on either side of it. At the fringes of the wan, yellow light the campfire cast, Ricky could see Doc’s long legs sticking back from where he lay keeping watch at the edge. The soles of his boots were nearly worn through, and his right heel was in bad need of repair.
Ricky saw the white-haired head raise up.
“Judging by the position of the Big Dipper,” he said, “and the time of year, I surmise it is approximately two in the morning.”
J.B. looked at him and grinned. He had his M-4000 taken apart and was cleaning it.
“You got a place to be, boy?” he asked.
Ricky walked over and hunkered down by the fire. He shook his head.
“So, what’s the plan?” Ricky asked, trying to sound chipper.
“Plan?” J.B. repeated.
Ryan just shook his head. He had his knees drawn up and sat staring between them at the fire.
“They got us locked up triple good here,” J.B. said. “Try as we might, we haven’t figured a way out of this one yet.”
He shrugged and began putting the blaster back together.
“So, are we going to try to break out?” Ricky asked.
“Got a prime defensive position here,” J.B. said. “We figure we can chill more of the bastards by lying up under cover and making them come to us. Of course, if you’re too impatient to get on with dying and all, you can just hop on down and charge them, single-handed, like.” He shook his head. “Not likely to make a whole lot of difference, one way or another.”
Ricky sighed and hung his head. For a fact, he was almost tempted to follow the Armorer’s advice. The prospect of living sweating out the hours left until dawn, second by grinding second, terrified him far more than getting shot to pieces by Cutter Dan and his horde.
“So, you reckon he’ll really wait for daylight?” he asked.
Ryan snorted. “No chance in hell,” he said. “He’s giving us a chance to get nervous and call the whole thing off, ’cause that’ll be the cheapest solution for him. But once he decides we’re not coming down the hill with our hands up, he’ll rush us, hope to catch us sleeping.”
“So—”
And suddenly, without the least bit of warning, there was a fourth man standing at the little fire.
Ricky brought up his longblaster to shoot.
Chapter Thirty
“What the nuke took you so long?” Ryan asked. He didn’t stir from where he was sitting.
Jak opened his mouth and gave that silent wolf laugh of his.
J.B. got up, though. He walked over and solemnly and without a word shook hands with the white-haired young man.
“By the Three Kennedys!” Doc exclaimed. He started to climb up from his lookout position. “Could it be—”
“Pipe down, Doc,” Ryan said. “Hold your position until relieved.”
“But is it true? The prodigal son returns?”
“Yeah.”
Ricky couldn’t contain himself. He ran up and caught Jak in a big bear hug. Ryan was pleased he had the presence of mind to grab him low and not slice his hands to shit on all the weird sharp stuff Jak had sewed to his jacket. Jak took it pretty well. He went rigid but didn’t freak out and try to knife Ricky or bust free or anything. He even managed to flap his hands feebly against Ricky’s sides a couple times.
So, basically, he was triple happy to see Ricky, too.
“How you been keeping yourself, Jak?” J.B. asked, as Ricky pulled back and then, realizing what he’d done, slunk away.
The kid didn’t have good impulse control yet, which didn’t stop him from overreacting when he realized he’d acted impulsively again.
“Busy,” Jak said.
Ryan noticed he had a gleam in his ruby-red eyes that wasn’t just the feeble glow of the fire. And that the pack he wore on his back, though it had a largish satchel strapped to the outside of it, was still appreciably smaller than the full-sized backpack he, like the others, carried his possessions and equipment in.
Now the albino unslung the pack and squatted to lay it on the ground, ceremoniously, at J.B.’s feet.
“Time get busy,” he said, pointing a white finger at the Armorer’s chest. “Brought present.”
“You did, did you?’ Reflexively J.B. glanced at Ryan.
“Go on,” Ryan urged. “Open it.”
J.B. leaned forward, opened the day pack a fraction and peeked inside. Suddenly his face lit up. He nodded slowly.
“Yeah,” he said. He raised his head and looked at Ryan. “Reckon we can put this stuff to good use, at that.”
* * *
“HOW LONG TILL dawn?” Cutter Dan asked.
He paced restlessly across the mostly level ground of his camp a quarter mile east of the area where their targets had holed up. He wanted to have a base that was safely out of sight and earshot of the fugitives, not merely out of blaster range. It gave him more scope to act without tipping his hand.
A handful of his lieutenants sat around several low campfires drinking coffee from metal mugs. Others came and went from the caves and tents that he and the thirty-odd men under his command slept in. He paid them little attention. He was constantly scanning the night with his eyes and other senses, constantly seeking some hint as to what his enemies were doing or information that might give him some advantage.
Cutter Dan was the first t
o admit he had no idea what that would be. That was one of the reasons he had kept his vigil all night long. He would only know it if he saw it—or heard, or sniffed or felt it.
That, and he wanted to be as alert as possible in case his spies or the seventy or so men he had stationed just inside the Wild reported some breakout attempt or other unusual activity by their quarry. You could never trust a man like Ryan Cawdor to simply stay put and meekly wait to die.
Old Pete had emerged from a tent a few minutes before and now sat wrapped in a blanket, drinking coffee. His nephew, Mort, squatted silently nearby.
“‘Bout an hour,” the wrinklie Indian said without looking up. “Hair more, mebbe.”
Cutter Dan didn’t bother asking him how he knew. He simply accepted it. The old Choctaw had proved steady and reliable throughout this whole manhunt. Anyway, that was what he had hired an Indian for in the first place, to know shit like that.
The chief marshal nodded decisively.
“Ace on the line,” he said, turning to the nearest fire. “Scovul.”
His lieutenant, who had returned from Second Chance, looked through the steam rising from the mug of coffee he’d just drawn from the big pot on the fire. “Sir.”
“Get the men up. I want ’em ready to move in ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” Scovul said. His black face was stone, but the way he turned the mug upside down and emptied it between his boots where he squatted spoke eloquently of his disgust. Ah, well, when a man took on the duties of a U.S. Marshal, as defined by Judge Santee and, of course, Cutter Dan, he agreed to take the bad with the good.
“Sir?” Belusky asked in surprise. “But you gave the coldhearts till dawn to surrender.”
Cutter Dan smiled benignly. The scar down the left side of his face only tugged a little, at the bottom near the end of his mouth.
“I lied.”
* * *
THE SKY WAS still black and full of stars as Cutter Dan made his way west along the foot of the red clay wall. The west wind blowing in their faces carried the slightest tang of smoke, confirming what he already knew: that his prey was waiting for him just a couple hundred yards ahead.