by James Axler
“That’s it?” Mildred asked. “She’s not even waiting for us to consult each other?”
“She knows if she’s lost Krysty, she’s lost us all,” Ryan said.
J.B. looked at him meaningfully. He shook his head.
When he reckoned she’d gone far enough not to hear, with the wind blowing brisk, hard spatters of rain hitting their faces as they watched her go, he said gently to his friend, “She did save us all back there. I won’t have her back-shot.”
“I didn’t think you were so sentimental,” Mildred said. Then her eyes widened. “I’m sorry, Ryan, Krysty. That came out meaner than I meant it.”
“Nothing shaken, Mildred,” he said. “Not sentiment. Standards. I’m not a coldheart. This is all the slack I mean to cut her. But I hope our paths don’t cross again.”
Krysty went to Ryan, buried her face in his chest and wept fiercely. He hugged her back fiercely.
When her sobbing subsided, she stepped back, shook her hair and smoothed the tears from her face. Then she leaned up and kissed Ryan on the lips.
“What now?” Mildred asked.
“I have to admit, I’m a bit worried,” Ricky said. “I mean, I don’t have any idea why it worked out this way. But it seems like four or five times recently, we’ve gotten into trouble that we’d never have gotten out of without Mariah’s help. What do we do now that she’s gone?”
J.B. pondered that a moment. He took off his round glasses and began to polish them with a handkerchief. “I reckon that we’d never gotten clear without her wading in. The first time, with those Buffalo Mob coldhearts, yeah. Mebbe. But these other times, I reckon we’d have found a way to pull through on our own.”
“Even this time?”
“We always have, so far,” the Armorer said. He held his glasses up to the clouded sky, inspected them through a squint, then settled them carefully back on his nose. “We’re good at it. Mebbe you noticed.”
“Also,” Mildred said, “we wouldn’t have been in this latest fix, except for her.”
“Then why did she intervene with such frequency?” Doc asked. “I understood that it pained her to make use of her power.”
“It hurt her less each time,” Krysty said. “At least after she joined up with us. She told me that.”
“She was protecting Krysty,” Mildred said. “She felt mighty protective of her.”
“Me, too,” Ryan said.
“And—” Krysty frowned and licked her lips “—she started liking it. The feeling it gave her, to use all that power.”
Ryan shrugged. “That’s the problem with power,” he said. “Starts out, mebbe you don’t want to use it, but then you keep coming up with more reasons why you’ve got to. For the greater good and all. Then, well, it just gets to feeling so rad-blasted good, you can just hardly help yourself. And then you’re using it all the time.”
The girl was already out of sight. Jak came trotting in from an angle. Ryan hadn’t even noticed him slipping away.
“Heading away,” he said quietly. Ryan knew who he meant.
He turned his back to the rain, toward the sorry ruin that was all that was left of Lone Calf.
“Best get back, see if we can get our gear out of Bodacious Creek Trading Post without the whole thing caving in on us,” he said. “Then shake the dust of this place off our boots in a hurry.”
“What about the injured?” Mildred asked. “Or helping victims dig out?”
Ryan shook his head. “They’re going to have to look after themselves. Yeah, that’s harsh. But at this point, we need to look out for ourselves—they’re more likely to lynch us than welcome our help.”
Mildred set her jaw. “You’re right,” she said. “Again.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Where are you going, little sister?”
The girl just stood there in front of them in the middle of an immense expanse of prairie, open except for scrub dotting the green grass, staring at Hammerhand and his Jeep Cherokee with eyes like two holes pissed in a snowbank.
“Look at her,” Mindy Farseer murmured from behind the wheel. “She’s nothing but skin and bones. I don’t think she’s been eating.”
She shook her head.
“Dark dust, I don’t think she’s even been drinking. Look how she’s shaking.”
He’d had scouts watching the whole time. They’d seen her walk away from the wreckage of Lone Calf after parting with the one-eyed man and his crew. At his orders, they’d shadowed her since, under strict instructions not to let themselves be seen.
He suspected they hadn’t had much trouble with that part. They were way more scared of her than they were of him. He didn’t blame them.
And in that whole time they hadn’t once seen her eat or drink. Even when she happened to wander in clear sight of a running stream. She just walked on alone, out into the wasteland.
“Right,” he said. “Mebbe she’ll be receptive and not just disintegrate me.”
He stuck his head out the window. “Hi. You’re Mariah, right? I’m Hammerhand. I just want to talk to you.”
She blinked, then frowned. “I know who you are,” she said in a raven’s croak. “You tried to kidnap me.”
“Yeah. Well. That was a misunderstanding, okay? I promise, I’m not about to do anything without your permission. So, can I get out?”
She nodded.
“Okay. Moving slowly, here.”
“Mebbe—I hate myself for saying this—but mebbe if she’s trying to chill herself by wandering around out here without looking for food and water...is that such a bad thing?”
Aside from the fact Trager would pitch a fit? Although Hammerhand had to admit that wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.
“Do we want to trust that’ll happen, just like that, though? What if somebody else happens across her before she dies? There’s worse people than us out here, you know.”
“Like Trager’s whitecoat pals.”
“Affirmative.”
Slowly he opened the door. He maintained eye contact with the girl the whole time. Her clothes were rumpled and dusty, and even her pigtails seem to hang in defeat.
“You sure this is a good idea?”
“Nuke, no. But I never expected to die in bed anyway.”
Deliberately he stepped out into the grass. He took a step forward, leaned against the side of the wag’s snout and crossed his arms over his chest. He wore a sleeveless cotton shirt this day. It was warm, though mostly overcast.
“I’d like to take you along with us, if you’re willing,” he said.
“Why would you want something like that?” she asked listlessly.
“I want to help you,” he said.
“What do you want from me? Nobody wants to help me without wanting something from me.”
“I’ll be honest with you, Mariah. I’m not different. But I’m not pretending either.
“You’re an outcast. I’m an outcast. You have special skills. I do, too, if not exactly in the same league. I reckon we can help each other, mebbe.”
She just stared at him.
He unfolded his arms, raised a hand and made a two-fingered come-ahead gesture at Mindy. She got out of the car slowly, her brown eyes wide.
She gave him a quick you have got to be shitting me look.
He grinned at her.
“This is my friend Mindy Farseer. She’ll help take care of you. There’s another nice woman named Corn Blossom in the back. She’ll help you, too. We’ll give you food, water. Get you out of the sun.”
“I don’t want food and water.”
“How about someone to be nice to you? I tell you what. They’ll be kind. They’ll take care of you, and you can come back with us to my tribe for a few days. Then, if you don’t feel like sta
ying, you can leave. No strings. How does that sound?”
He was gambling that she missed human company and was a sucker for a pleasant voice. And what he told her was true—mostly.
She hesitated.
“You’re lonely, right? Bet you’ve been lonely a long time. We’ll treat you kindly.”
For the first time, her face, which remained pale despite being unshielded from the sun’s burning rays, showed sign of emotion: she frowned.
“The people I was with,” she said, “they were nice, too. Until they made me leave.”
So that’s the way you turned it around in your mind, he thought. The scouts had told Hammerhand it looked to them like a mutual parting of ways. Or as much as you could tell through good field glasses at two hundred yards.
“Did they, ah, did they tell you what they wanted from you?”
“No.”
“Well, I will. I want your help. But you can be my guest as long as you like. I’m not a poor wanderer scuffling for my next meal. And you know that’s true.”
“Yes.”
“So how about it? Let Mindy put you in the wag, and then Corn Blossom will give you a nice drink. Much as you want. And honey.”
She moistened her lips. “I like honey,” she said.
“You’re a smooth devil, boss,” Mindy said softly from right beside him. “Slick-talking a poor, crazy, half-dead little girl.”
“Shut it.”
But he could see Mariah hadn’t decided. There was no give in her. He found himself admiring that. It was clear she had a power of determination by the course she’d set herself. Starving and drying yourself to death deliberately took a degree of willpower he wasn’t sure he had.
“You can help me,” he said. “We’re going to bring peace to the Plains, at last.”
She stiffened.
What the nuke was wrong with that? he wondered.
“The whitecoats said that, too. I didn’t believe them. They were bad. I could tell.”
He exchanged sidelong glances with Mindy.
“Where did you happen across these whitecoats?”
“Driving. From one ville to another. This big round shiny thing like a mirror just appeared in front of us, and a bunch of men in black with these blaster things got out. Then two whitecoats got out. They wanted me to go with them.”
“And you didn’t.”
She shook her head. “I made them leave me alone.”
“I’ll just bet you did, honey,” Mindy muttered.
“I tell you what, Mariah,” Hammerhand said. “See Mindy, here? That blaster she wears by her side? She’s triple good with that. And if I do anything—anything—that makes you uncomfortable, she’ll pull it right out and chill me dead.”
He turned to Mindy. “You heard me. I so command.”
“Don’t think I won’t, boss. I’m tempted to anyway, on general principle. For getting me into this.”
“You can thank me when you’re marshal of the Northern Plains.”
Mindy made a sour noise, but then she stepped toward Mariah and held out her hand.
“I’m Mindy, like the man said. I’d like you to come with me, please.”
For a moment he thought she might actually bolt. And I’ll shoot her right straight in the back of her head, he thought. I am not letting her wander loose all over the world, with a belly full of mad and a power like that.
And come to think about it, her trying to flee would be the second-best outcome. If she decided he was a threat after all, or that she just plain didn’t like him...
The girl nodded, then she swayed. Mindy was instantly at her side, supporting her with a hand around her shoulders.
“It’s all right, Mariah,” the woman said. “Come on with me. Can you walk? I’ll help you walk. That’s right. And you’ll like Corn Blossom. She’ll take good care of you.”
She escorted the child to the rear of the wag, steering a course wide of Hammerhand. As they passed, she shot him a death glare.
“Women,” he said under his breath, as Corn Blossom, a sturdy middle-aged Arapaho woman, got out to coo over the girl.
Then he grinned. No stopping you now, boy, he told himself. Unless of course she ups and chills you.
* * *
“SO, DO YOU really think this is a good idea?” Mildred asked her friend.
“Which one, Mildred?” Krysty asked cheerfully.
They were rolling through a beautiful morning with Ryan at the wheel, down into the green Missouri River Valley in search of the ferry to take them across. Actually, it was just a raft on a rope strung bank to bank. But it would carry their wag, or so the trader-talk said, and they needed to cross the run-off swollen torrent on another courier gig.
“Hanging on around here,” Mildred said. “Instead of clearing out as fast as we can.”
Between them the bed was stacked with their packs and supplies, secured by crisscrossings of coarse hemp rope. One of their wags had not survived Mariah’s Lone Calf outburst. Or at least the engine compartment and the front part of the cab hadn’t. They could all squeeze into the front and back seats together, being as they were already pretty friendly and all. But that wasn’t comfortable. And anyway Mildred had thought it might be time for a good woman-to-woman talk with her flame-haired friend.
“I’m not sure what’s a good idea,” she said, “and not just about this. Sometimes I’m starting to feel as if it just doesn’t make any difference what we do...if we’re just doomed to wander the Deathlands forever.”
“You’re not afraid of running into the girl again?”
Krysty hesitated. “I hope to see her again, to tell you the truth. I miss her.”
“You’re not scared of her?”
“I don’t think she’d hurt me. We were close, which is why I feel so bad about sending her away.”
“Then why’d you suggest it in the first place?”
Mentally, Mildred kicked herself. That came out way harsher than I wanted, she thought. Ah, well. I always did have a lousy bedside manner.
“I was scared for the rest of you. That’s true. But more, I was afraid what it would do to us. Being with her the next time she lost control and killed a bunch of innocent people and ruined the lives of others. And the time after that. At what point do we become complicit?”
Some might argue we already were, Mildred thought. But she held her tongue. She could see how torn up Krysty was about the end of her increasingly tight relationship with Mariah. And the way it had ended.
“But about staying in these parts, mostly in what was South Dakota, back in the day,” she said instead. “If we don’t bug out, shouldn’t we try to, well—do something about her? Instead of letting her run loose with all that power that seems to control her more than she does it?”
“How?”
Mildred shook her head and sighed. “Got me there.”
“Ryan’s right,” Krysty said. “This is an easy life for us. Even if it’s not exactly settled. I guess this is the best thing to do for now. Until we can’t. Or until—”
“What?” Mildred prodded after a pause that seemed likely to stretch to infinity.
“I was going to say, ‘something better comes along,’” Krysty said. “But we know that’s not going to—”
The sound of somebody slapping the outside of a wag door made them look around. Ricky poked his head out the driver’s-side rear window.
“Ryan says to tell you two to wake up back there,” he called. “Ferry’s in sight!”
Looking around, Mildred saw it, too.
Her heart sank. It was to a “ferry” what some crazy mountain man’s lean-to was to the White House. Calling it a “raft” seemed stretching the point.
“It’s not just a job, they tell me,” she said with sigh.
“It’s an adventure.”
* * *
“ALL RIGHT, GIRLS,” Hammerhand said, sticking his head into the cool interior of his personal tepee. “Put some clothes on. You got company.”
“But you like us this way,” whined one, a skinny, freckled redhead.
“Yeah,” the shorter, curvier dark one said.
“Yeah, Shelley, I do. Now I want you two to put some nuking clothes on. I got a little girl for you to take care of, and I want you to treat her right. So make yourselves decent, for Spirit’s sake.”
“A little girl? We’re not babysitters,” Shelley said.
“You are now.”
“Wait, a little girl?” the brunette asked. “That’s disgusting.”
“It’s not like that, Prairie Fire. I don’t want her for her body. That’s what I have you two for.”
He backed out and turned to find Dr. Trager standing right behind him.
“You got her,” the little man stated. “Outstanding. You can give her to me now. I’ll see that she gets to my associates.”
“That’s a negative.”
For a moment the shabby, greasy little whitecoat looked as if he actually did not understand what those words meant.
“What?”
“She’s not going anywhere. Except with me.”
“But that’s ridiculous! You promised you’d get her for us.”
“I promised I’d get her. That’s a little bit different.”
“But you gave me to understand you’d hand her over once you obtained her.”
“Well, mebbe. Now I’m not doing that.”
Trager started to become visibly angry. “After all we’ve given you,” he began, “all we’ve done for you—”
“You need me bad. That’s clear. And you did before you had any idea Mariah and her little power even existed.”
“What are you going to do with her?”
Hammerhand gave him a big grin. “What you and your friends have been setting me up to do all along—take over the Plains. And when I’m done, mebbe I’ll feel nice and grateful, and turn her over. Now get out of my sight.”
“But—”