by James Axler
“Yes, ma’am, sorry,” he blubbered in apology, trying to force a grin.
“How did you know we were coming?” Ryan demanded, his hand still on the grip of the SIG-Sauer. The urge to kill was taking a long time to leave. He knew that his nerves were on edge from the lack of sleep, and it was becoming difficult to think clearly.
“Sec men sent a runner, told me to get some rooms ready. I chased out the lizards and put in a clean night soil bucket,” Sparrow said in a rush of words. “Ya gotta empty that yourself, ya know. I run this place. Ain’t got no slaves. Ain’t allowed. Not enough water to spare.”
“Hurrah for the baron,” J.B. stated. On the wall was a honeycomb of letter slots, each with a hook for a key, but none was in sight. “Where are the keys?”
“Done need any,” Sparrow said. “None of the locks on the first floor work. We had to bust ’em down to get in and never saw the way of fixing them.”
“And what room were you told to prepare for us?” Ryan demanded.
“The big one on the first floor, way in the back, near the garbage dump,” Sparrow said, rubbing a hand across his soft belly. “Now if ya want something better on the second floor, we got that. Door got a lock, and the window overlooks the barn so ya can watch your stuff. Curtains, nice and cool during the day. Best we got!”
There was a pause, then he added, “Of course, that costs more.”
J.B. grunted at the news and Ryan narrowed his eyes. So that was it, eh?
“How much for the clean room?” he asked.
Smiling with greed, Sparrow said, “Half your water ration. We got a deal?”
“No,” Ryan said, turning away and heading for the door. “We’ll stay in the barn.”
“But you can’t do that!” Sparrow cried out. “The baron said ya gotta stay here!”
“And we shall be sure to tell him about your hospitality,” Doc added. “Perhaps he would be interested in how you obtain extra water from travelers. I wonder if that falls into the category of stealing water?”
“Hey, now,” Sparrow whispered, going pale. “No need for that. Man’s got a right to earn a little water now and then. I was just, like, ya know…
Help me Jed!”
There was a creak as the office door started to swing open, pushed by the barrel of a longblaster. Moving fast, Ryan fired twice into the wood, slamming it closed. There came a muffled cry of pain and a thump from other side.
“Don’t move!” Mildred commanded, her .38 revolver pointed at Sparrow. The desk clerk froze motionless, his hand only inches from the club.
Krysty and Doc went back to watch the front door and the balcony for the arrival of reinforcements.
With a low growl, the mutt started to rise and Jak pointed his Colt Python at the animal. “Call off,” he said, cocking back the hammer on the blaster.
“Sit, boy,” Sparrow said, shaking with rage.
Obediently, the dog stopped making noise, then turned around a few times before settling down with his bone once more.
Swinging around the Uzi, J.B. kicked open the office door and Ryan charged through, his blaster leading the way. Sitting on the dirty floor was another fat man, holding his bloody mouth. Next to him was a homemade blaster composed of a small-diameter bathroom pipe wrapped in layers of iron wire and bound to a wooden dowel. A cartridge was inserted into the crude barrel of the zip gun, two more rolling loosely on the linoleum.
“Kick it away,” Ryan ordered and the man complied, the homemade gun skittering under a metal desk. “Now, move, fat boy!”
Slowly, the corpulent fellow rose to shuffle into the lobby and joined Sparrow at the sandbags. This close together, it was clear the two men were brothers, maybe even twins. Or else the gene pool of the ville was dangerously small.
“Damn, you folks are good,” Sparrow muttered. “Haven’t seen anybody move that fast, not even Hawk.”
“Except for that bitch Kate,” Jed added, trying to staunch the flow of blood from his split lip. “Damn, I think a tooth is broken.”
“Tough,” Ryan growled. “Who’s Kate, the baron’s wife?”
“Some slut who works for the Trader,” Jed mumbled.
“Who? Oh, you mean Trader Kate,” Ryan corrected. There were a lot of traders in the Deathlands, and they all used the word as a title, the way the barons did. Only the legendary Trader was known by the single word.
“No, just Kate,” Sparrow corrected. “She’s the sec chief for Trader.”
“How do you know about the Trader?” Ryan asked, trying to control his words. The blaster felt big in his hands, as uncontrollable as a thrashing snake.
“I bought a predark med from him that saved my arm after a mutie bit me,” Jed said, blood dribbling down his chin. “Didn’t charge me anything what he could have.”
“How long ago was this?” Krysty asked urgently.
Sparrow started to lower his hands, but at a gesture from Mildred he quickly raised them again. “I dunno,” he said, scowling as if forcing a dim memory. “Maybe five months. Long time ago.”
“Months,” J.B. said slowly. “You gotta mean years. Five years, right?”
The fat man shrugged. “Whatever you say, you got the blaster,” he replied. “But I ain’t no feeb. It was less than half a year ago. He and the baron had a big fight about something, and the Trader ain’t been back since. Used to stop by fairly regularly. Bought a lot of water.”
“What’s he to y’all?” Jed asked suspiciously. “Kin?”
“Describe him,” Ryan demanded, feeling his heart pound in his chest. It was impossible.
The brothers exchanged glances. “The Trader? Hell, I dunno,” Sparrow said. “Never saw the guy. He was always inside a big-ass tank, stays behind a blister of the military glass.”
“How many wags?” J.B. demanded. “Describe them!”
Sparrow scrunched his face. “Well, there were three, one big wag and two others, each plated with metal and covered with blasters. Big stuff, cannons, mortars and rockets. Baron Gaza was scared to death of the guy. Hell, who wouldn’t be with all his weapons.”
“More,” Ryan said through clenched teeth.
Fumbling for a reply, Jed scratched his head. “Well, I heard Kate call the big wag War Wag One. That help any?”
The universe seemed to go still at those simple words, as if it were breaking apart and rejoining in a new pattern, reorganizing itself on a most basic of levels.
“He’s alive,” Ryan stated. “Trader is alive and back in business!”
Chapter Eleven
Mists of steam filling the air of the small marble room, Baron Edgar Gaza was sprawled naked in the shallow end of his large swimming pool, the clear mountain water flowing steadily around his hard muscular form from a feeder pipe. On the tiles near his head was a pile of dry towels and several loaded blasters. Laying at the bottom of the pool was a stiletto.
“I think they’re spies sent by the Trader,” Hawk said quietly, leaning against a marble pillar. His shirt was unbuttoned to the waist, the entire tattoo of the scorpion visible on his broad chest. “Best to chill them. Gather ten, no, make that twenty of our best men. We’ll make this a night creep and garrote the bunch in their sleep.”
Soaping his arms, Gaza gazed at his sec chief with saturnine calm. “The women, too?”
“Women we got,” the sec man snorted angrily.
At the far end of the pool, the women of the baron’s harem were slowly washing themselves, the sudsy water carried away into another predark pipeline. Where the dirty water went the baron had no idea, but it was no place local so it wasn’t a challenge to his control over the ville. Once, the wife of a blacksmith had given birth to a tiny baby, and when the boy was ten Gaza equipped the child with several bottles of air and flushed him down the pipeline with orders to return and his family would live comfortably for the rest of their lives. A lie, but the boy eagerly accepted the challenge and dived into the feeder pipe. He was never heard from again.
The women sta
yed in this wing of the keep, their tongues removed to stop any of them from talking just in case one of them escaped somehow. Whenever one of them got too old, Gaza would brutally kill her in front of the others saying she had tried to escape, and then he would beat the rest as punishment for allowing her to try. Escape attempts were few and far between.
It was something his father had taught him, keep the slaves suspicious of one another and they become the guards. His father had been a very wise man, the founder of Rockpoint ville. Wise and hard. Edgar had been the youngest son of the baron, and one day had been pitted against his older brothers in the Arena. Armed with knives and spiked clubs, the boys were commanded to fight, the winner to be the heir to the ville. Edgar had offered to team with a sibling and share the ville, and when the fool accepted and turned his back, Edgar beat him to death and stole his knife. Now armed with two weapons, he savagely fought the others and won. But the eldest brother had gotten in a few good strikes before dying, and Edgar’s badly broken leg had never healed correctly. He still limped to this day, the old break aching badly when the acid rains came in the fall.
“Well?” Hawk demanded impatiently. “What should we do, Baron?”
Washing lazily, Gaza looked at the desert giant. His loyalty was unquestionable, which was why the baron allowed the mutie to challenge his orders. Only a fool listened to bootlickers. Hawk had been found in the desert crawling with scorpions, stung a hundred times. Incredibly, the man lived and was proved immune to the deadly poison of the tiny killers. A useful skill that became their safeguard on the Scorpion God.
The sec men sometimes referred to him as the Big Scorpion, which amused Gaza greatly. The more the troops feared Hawk, the more authority the baron had over them. It was all a matter of control. Which was why he created the water shortage. If he opened the pipes, the entire valley would be flooded. But a simple twist of the valve and the water slowed to the merest trickle. Now visitors paid for the precious liquid with ammo and horses, food, and sometimes their very lives. His troops had the pick of the sluts, and his people believed that he was their savior and only chance of life.
“We shall ace them, of course,” Baron Gaza said, slipping under the water for a moment, then rising to push back his wet hair. The women waded closer to their “husband,” wrapping him in dry towels as he walked from the pool.
“How is the matter in question,” Gaza said, taking a clean robe from a marble bench and belting a robe about his waist. “They have rapidfires and a predark ammo. And the black hair man, Ryan, has the look of a real fighter. I think it might be best to let them stay for a day or two, sell them water and then track them when they leave. Ace them far from the ville and bring the blasters and wag back for our private arsenal.”
Padding naked past the sec man, a blonde looked at the giant with no more interest than if he were a chair, her full breasts swinging to the gentle motion of her young body. Hawk understood why their tongues had been removed, but considered it a waste. However, they could still be bent over a bench. Didn’t need a tongue for that.
“Chill them now, tonight,” Hawk countered, rubbing the scars along his neck with a palm.
Taking the stopper from a crystal bottle, Gaza poured a goblet full of sparkling clean water, spilling some onto the floor in the process.
“All right,” the baron said after taking a sip. “Send troops to the motel and ace the outlanders in their beds. Then blame Sparrow and drag him through the courtyard to the temple. He has been stealing from me long enough.”
“Nobody is above the law,” Hawk agreed, rubbing his tattoo as he watched the women splash about in the soapy pool. Already the currents were flushing the suds away, leaving the water clear.
Noticing the direction of his gaze, Baron Gaza fixed the man with a hard look. “Remember that, old friend,” he growled. “What scorpions can’t ace, the Scorpion God can.”
IN THE LOBBY of the motel, the companions stood transfixed, their minds trying to absorb the implications of the incredible news.
“The Trader and Abe are alive,” Ryan repeated softly.
“Mebbe,” Krysty countered, then nodded at the two fat men. “We should continue this in private.”
“Please,” Sparrow begged, misunderstanding her statement and dropping to his knees. “Don’t chill us!”
“Upstairs stupe,” Ryan ordered, gesturing with the SIG-Sauer. “Jak, get the dogs.”
The teenager nodded and started urging the hounds into the office with a soft whistle. The beasts followed him into the room and he closed the door with a sharp bang.
“My dogs,” Sparrow cried. “Not my dogs!”
“Shut up and move,” J.B. ordered, poking the man with the Uzi.
As they marched the fat men up the stairs, Jed tried to make a break and Ryan clubbed him to the floor with the barrel of his blaster. Trembling in fear, Sparrow did nothing, unable to speak. Going to the end of the corridor, Ryan shoved open a door to find a corner room containing only the barest essentials, a mattress on the floor, empty water pitcher and a night soil bucket.
Putting the men back to back on the dirty mattress, Ryan and J.B. kept them covered while Mildred cut some rope from the blinds and Doc expertly tied their feet at the ankles, and then each man’s hand to the other’s arm in a crisscross pattern. The brothers grumbled and complained, but didn’t resist.
Coming out of the dark bathroom, Krysty ripped a paper-thin towel into strips and stuffed a wad of cloth into their mouths before gagging them tightly.
“Good job,” Mildred said in approval. “They’re not getting out of that.”
Leaving the room, J.B. used his tools on the door and tricked the lock into engaging with a solid click. “That’ll hold them for a while,” he said, tucking the picks into his munitions bag.
Returning downstairs, the companions found Jak at the front counter, stropping a knife on a whetstone.
“Oh, no, did you kill the dogs?” Mildred asked.
“Nah,” Jak drawled, sheathing the blade. “Locked in office.”
“Good enough,” Ryan said, holstering his piece, then rubbing his face. Fireblast, he was tired. But the sleep that had been so tantalizingly close was now faraway. “So, what do you think?” he asked aloud.
“Beats me,” J.B. said bluntly, leaning against the sandbags and crossing his arms. “But it sort of makes sense. Where else could they get the ammo if not from a trader? There’s certainly no ruins around here to scavenge.”
“Might be just somebody using the name,” Mildred suggested. “As advertising. You can trust me, I’m Trader, sort of thing.”
“Never thought that,” Jak growled. “Twisted.”
The physician smiled. “No, my friend, you’re just an honest man.”
“Get lot enemies that,” Jak added. “But make lot deals, too.”
“However, there’s a chance that it might actually be Trader,” Ryan said slowly.
“Then again, it might just be some mercie who could have the Trader a prisoner,” J.B. said, removing his glasses to clean them on a sleeve. “Forcing tech secrets about the wags and blasters to build an empire. Or his son, or a clone, or…”
His voice trailed off, the possibilities were damn near endless. And after what they had seen traveling the Deathlands, the man knew that almost anything was possible these days.
In reply, Ryan shook his head. There were too many questions and no bastard answers at all.
Darkness was starting to cover the ville, so Krysty lit a candle. Out the front windows, Ryan could see the bright light coming from the barn next door.
“Now what?” Mildred asked. “Somebody is going to eventually miss those fools, so the sooner we leave, the better.”
“We can’t leave at night,” Ryan said, starting to pace. “Not without acing some folks, and then we’ll have a war party chasing our asses across the desert.”
“Tomorrow should be good. Got to remove that sticking thermostat anyway,” J.B. said, slipping on his gl
asses again. “A few hours of work could triple our speed across Texas. Six hundred miles is a long way to the next—” he paused and glanced up the stairs to the closed door “—to the next, ahem, waterhole.”
Stopping near the fountain, Ryan grunted at the discretion. They knew better than to even say the word redoubt among others. Some people knew of the legends, but the fewer that number stayed, the better.
“Engines have their use, madam,” Doc rumbled. “But I have yet to see a car that can reproduce itself.”
Horses, eh? There was a thought. “How much ammo do we have?” Krysty asked, rummaging in her pocket. “I have a box.”
“Total of three more boxes of the .22 cartridges,” J.B. replied. “More than enough to buy horses. The locals have plenty, so the price shouldn’t be too high.”
“Unless the baron owns all of the horses.”
“Not going reach Grandee on horses,” Jak said. “Need wag. Bad land down there.”
“Besides, we don’t know how to find the Trader,” Krysty stated bluntly. “His supply bases are secret, even if it is the same person.”
“We used to know them,” J.B. added. “But he was always changing the locations in case of a traitor.”
Ryan frowned deeply. A traitor, that was something he hadn’t considered until now.
“But how find?” Jak demanded, brushing back his long snowy hair.
Pulling a map from his munitions bag, J.B. smoothed it across the counter and the companions gathered around, the combined candlelight almost making the document readable.
“Now we came from the east,” Ryan said, “which leaves north, south and west. South of here is the Grandee, north is New Mex and the west is unknown.”
“Three choices, none of them guaranteed,” Mildred said, using her butane lighter to start a lumpy candle on the front counter. The tiny flame constantly jerked as the fatty wax spit and popped. “And a million combinations mixed in between those three. This is hopeless!”