by Axler, James
"John needs to be rested and cleaned up," she said to Mac. "So if you show us where we're sleeping, and get me some hot water…"
She trailed off, noticing that the potbellied sec man was looking at her uncomfortably.
"Reckon it may not be that simple, missy," he said softly. "See, all outlanders or insiders are killed to appease sunup. Without sacrifice to the sun, well, the storms could get worse."
Mildred regarded him coldly, suddenly aware once again of the light scouring of dust and the perpetual breeze. It was much less than at its worst, but still ever present.
Mac flinched before her stony gaze.
"You mean to tell me that after all we did to try and save that freakin' rag woman and that fat giant, after all we did together to fight off those freakin' squirrels, you'll sell us down the river and let us be chilled to try and stop a storm that never ceases?"
Mac couldn't look at her. He stared at one of the huts. "Mebbe Abner will make the decision…under the circumstances. But it's not up to me."
"Not up to you," Mildred spit back, looking at J.B., whose eyes flickered wildly behind closed lids, encountering terrors in his delirium that only he could ever understand.
"It's okay, Mildred," Ryan said softly. They had their blasters and other weapons, but they were a man short and in the middle of the ville. He wanted to buy some time, and if it meant being nice to these bastards, then so be it.
"No, let the black woman speak."
The voice was wheezing, old and had a sly quality that immediately pricked Ryan's suspicion. It came from the edge of the clearing, and the speaker walked through the small crowd as it parted for him.
He was shorter than Mac, and if anything, even more potbellied than the sec man. His breathing was labored, and his long, thinning and straggly hair was a dirty gray streaked with black. His long mustache and beard were similarly peppered.
"Are you the baron of this ville?" Ryan asked him.
The man looked puzzled. "Baron? That's not a word I know for what I am. I'm the leader of this here ville, if that's what you mean. Just like my pappy before me, and his pappy. We always have been, long as there's been a ville. I've heard other outlanders talk of barons, but not the insiders with the stupe uniforms."
"We're outlanders, I guess, certainly not from the redoubt."
"The what?" the old man asked, furrowing his brow.
"He means the place where the insiders come from," Mac offered. "Guess that's what they call it."
The old man nodded, then smiled at them. "Anyways, you can call me Abner. Least I can do, all things considered. Got to be friendly now."
"Why?" Ryan asked.
Abner smiled again, ingenuously. "Hell, boy, the sun don't like it if we're not real friendly to those we chill for him."
Chapter Sixteen
The hut in which they were imprisoned was a round adobe structure of mud and straw. The walls were flimsy, with patches where the mud had caked dry too quickly and not been bound by the straw which was visible in the flickering shadows cast by the old hurricane lamp that sputtered smokily in the center of the hut.
J.B. lay near the center, an equally foul-smelling poultice on his wounds.
"Are you sure this will work?" Mildred asked Krysty skeptically. "Back when I was in med school, they weren't exactly hot for herbal medicines."
Krysty shook her head. "I know, but when it's all you've got… When I was young, back in Harmony, Mother Sonja taught me how to blend healing things from the most unlikely sources. It might smell like shit, and no one knows how it works, but if there aren't any meds, then it's got to be worth a shot."
Mildred joined Krysty by J.B.'s side. In the light of the flickering lamp, his brow was dripping with sweat, matting his already soaking hair and running in rivulets down his face and neck.
Mildred stroked his forehead gently, feeling the heat rise from him. He responded to the pressure of her touch by muttering incomprehensibly, opening his eyes for a second but not really seeing.
Krysty moved the poultice, made from rags she had persuaded Abner to give them. The wound underneath was cleaner than before, pus and a clear discharge being drawn from it and onto the rags. A cauldron of lukewarm water—boiling when left by Mac earlier—stood to one side of the hut. Krysty stripped the pus-covered rags from the outer covering of the poultice and threw them into the cauldron.
"Water's next to useless," she commented. "Too cool to be any good, and we've got no more rags. Time to find our own."
Without comment Ryan, Jak and Dean all started to strip down to their underwear. Having acquired it at the redoubt the day before, it was relatively clean, and having been under their other clothing, was protected from the ravages of the dust and dirt that had assailed them in the storms.
All three men took off the regulation military white T-shirts and handed them to Mildred. Jak also handed her one of his leaf-bladed knives, with which she sliced the material into strips, handing it to Krysty. The material formed a new dressing on the poultice, which was replaced on J.B.'s injuries.
"Will he make it?" Ryan asked, speaking for the first time since their imprisonment.
Mildred shrugged. "This gunk is working by the look of it, and he should be past the crisis of his fever before too long. If he gets through that okay, then he'll live. The question then is how fit will he be to move when we make a break."
She tried to keep her voice even, to sound offhand about J.B.'s chances. But she was fooling no one: they all knew how much it was eating into her.
"I'm just wondering if we should make a break," Ryan said quietly.
Dean looked at his father sharply. "We've got to, Dad. There's J.B. to get out of here, and Doc to get after. Besides, I don't want to be chilled as part of some dumb-ass ritual to the frigging sun."
Ryan regarded Dean coldly. His one eye blazed anger. "Remember who's in charge here, boy. The only chance we have is if we work together, not pulling separately. Before you jump to conclusions, hear me out. I've got no intention of being chilled, either. Trader used to say that when your time was up, you had to go down. Well, I don't feel like going down without fighting. But there's more than one way of fighting."
"Sorry," the boy muttered.
Jak put an arm around his shoulders. He was only a few years older than Dean, and yet in terms of harsh experience he was an old man.
"More one way skin mutie rabbit. Mebbe not best blast way out—'specially when no blasters."
Dean bit his lip and smiled. It was a good point. Still stunned by Abner's pronouncement, none of them had been ready for the sudden swarm of ville dwellers, who had taken it as their cue to rush forward and disable the outlanders, moving like a mass of ants that engulfed their enemies, sheer weight of numbers pinning them to the ground and enabling the ville dwellers to strip them of their weapons.
Or almost all of their weapons. Jak's throwing knives were so well hidden in the patches and folds of his coat that it would have taken a long and thorough search to uncover them.
There hadn't been time for such a search. They had been picked up by the swarm and rushed into the hut.
Once in there, Mac and his mute sec men had trained their blasters on them while Abner had told them that he would assist them, in whatever way his people could, to heal J.B.'s wounds. It was important that the sun receive a "whole" sacrifice, and not a damaged one.
And so they had been left here. At least, as he had warned them that the outside of the hut would be guarded, Mac had had the grace to look embarrassed at his behavior.
"Why can't we make a break for it?" Dean continued impatiently.
"Because walls have ears for one," Krysty snapped, losing her patience, "especially walls that are made of mud and straw. And for two, how can we move with J.B. in this condition?"
"I guess…yeah, I guess so," Dean said quietly.
Ryan beckoned them into the center of the hut, where they crouched around the prone Armorer, as though watching him. Ryan spoke low
and soft.
"We're better fighters, but this is their terrain, and they're used to the weather conditions. Besides which they outnumber us. We've got a short while to prepare something. They won't chill us in this ritual until J.B.'s at least coherent. Thing is, what exactly do we do?"
"Mebbe," Jak said, scratching idly, "mebbe need take Abner."
Ryan nodded. "They seem to follow him blindly, so yeah, if we have him, that's a powerful bargaining tool."
"How far are we going to get out there with John like this?" Mildred looked down at J.B. and shook her head. "The thing he'll need most is time, and that's just what we don't have."
"Then we'll buy it." Ryan looked his son squarely in the face. "I've got an idea, and I need to know I can rely on you totally."
"Dad, you don't even have to ask," Dean replied.
THE STARS TWINKLED faintly through the ever present curtain of dust. It was a lighter breeze than usual on this night, stirring motes on the surface of the tracks that comprised the roads of the small ville.
Mac sighed and leaned on his blaster, his arms crossed and resting on the mouth of the long, roughly beaten barrel. It was bored smooth inside, but the outer metal was still pitted and uneven, where he hadn't been bothered to shape or smooth it. The butt rested in the dirt, trigger a long way from his finger. He was supposed to be on guard, but felt tired after the long trek from the redoubt back to the ville. They had been on a scavenger hunt, hoping for some equipment that had been left by the insiders, and hadn't bargained on walking into a firefight between the prisoners and some of the insiders.
And it had been a real firefight. Mac had never really gone along with Tilly's idea that it was part of some plot to infiltrate the ville. After all, how would the insiders know that they were going to be there, let alone that they wouldn't just chill anyone they captured?
He sighed to himself, barely able to keep his eyelids open. It had always paid to go along with Tilly, because she was insane and might just tear your throat out if you said the wrong thing. Tilly and the giant Tod had been two of the best fighters in the ville, and now they were gone. Mac shook his head sadly. They were good to have on your side. What his people would do now worried him.
He yawned. It wasn't his problem. Except that if not for the outlanders, he'd be as chilled as Tilly and Tod. Even so, Abner had wanted to use them for the ritual chill. It didn't strike him as being a good move. Their skills would be good for the protection of the ville. Besides which, he figured that he owed them for his life.
But he was just a sec man—the chief, sure, but still just a sec man. He couldn't go against the leader.
He was so occupied by his thoughts that he didn't notice the slight scuffling behind him, didn't notice first Jak and then Dean emerge from around the side of the hut, covered in dirt and mud, pieces of straw still clinging to their clothing.
Jak picked up a rock from the ground, a jagged but basically round rock that fit into the palm of his pale hand, and brought it down with a sharp and fierce force on the back of his skull.
"I CAN'T SAY I feel good about sitting on my ass doing nothing while they're out there risking their necks." Mildred's tone was angry, but from frustration rather than anything else, as she soaked strips of cloth in the now cold water, squeezed them out and applied them to J.B.'s fevered brow.
"Can't say I don't agree with you," Ryan said, squatting by the hurricane lamp and drawing patterns in the dirt with his finger. "Fact of the matter is, I'm itching to get out there, but it just isn't possible."
"I know," Mildred whispered. "I just feel the frustration, too, I guess."
Ryan didn't answer. There was nothing to say. The plan had been worked by himself and Jak, but this was one of those rare occasions where Ryan could do nothing but sit and wait.
The albino had noticed that the adobe wall at the back of the hut had a small gap of a few inches, forming a hollow that bit into the wall and the earth beneath. It formed a small channel into which the inhabitants of the hut had to urinate and defecate, a kind of primitive sewer.
Jak and Dean were small and slender enough to squeeze through the gap without disturbing the fragile wall too much. The albino teen was certain that the back of the hut wouldn't be guarded, and if it was, then the guards wouldn't expect anyone to crawl out through the channel. The sec men in the ville were too used to defeating any enemy using the storms. They had little idea of what to actually do with any captives.
It was a theory in which he had been proved correct. He and Dean had squeezed through and come around to the sole guard at the front of the hut without encountering anyone else.
Now they were on their way to where Abner lay sleeping, while Ryan, Mildred and Krysty stood watch over J.B.
"SO WHERE DOES this guy Abner live, anyway?" Dean whispered to Jak as they slunk from shadow to shadow, in and out of the huts and shacks. It was incredibly quiet, as though all life ceased with sundown. Perhaps it did. If the ville scratched a living from the soil, with only the occasional opportunity to trade, then it was probable that the inhabitants were ruled by the rise and fall of the sun, working the land as long and hard as they could.
If that was so, then it would make it easier for them to find Abner and make him see their point of view.
If they could ever work out where he was.
Jak stood in the shadows, his ruby eyes raking the darkness. His night vision was better, in some ways, than his day vision. Because his albino traits left him sensitive to the light, he was able to make out shapes in the darkness without an excess of light blinding him.
"Guess look for biggest shack. No baron live in shithole," he answered finally.
"The whole place is a shithole," Dean replied with a grin.
Jak returned the grin. "Some less shit than others. Like that…"
Dean followed Jak's arm. About fifty yards in front of them lay a shack with a veranda. It was the only one they'd seen so far that had such a structure. And there was more—two sec men were seated in old cane chairs at each end of the veranda, cradling handblasters. It was impossible to tell from that range, and in this light, but by the shape of them Jak suspected that one was a .44 Magnum, long barreled and deadly. The other was a .50 Magnum Desert Eagle. Both were deadly blasters, even given that they probably weren't in the best of condition. None of the blasters Jak had seen so far in this ville were well cared for.
"Looks like it could be the place," Dean murmured.
Jak nodded. "Big shack, two sec men…not home of shit shoveler, even in shithole."
They withdrew farther into the shadows to watch and observe. They stayed there for almost half an hour, crouched in the dark and ignoring the cramp in their aching limbs. Neither had been able to rest adequately before setting out to search for the dwelling.
Nothing happened. The guards didn't move, seeming to be sleeping fitfully. There was no movement other than the snuffling of a stray dog.
"These guys are slack," Dean commented eventually, shifting to rid himself of the pins and needles running down his leg. "I don't think they'd know what to do if they were attacked."
"Mebbe not, but no need to take for granted," Jak returned. "Act like best sec men ever seen."
Saying no more, he slipped Dean two of the leaf-bladed knives to use as weapons and gestured to indicate a roundabout pattern for the boy to follow so that he would come up to the sec man on the left from behind, hitting the man in his blind spot.
Dean nodded and set off, leaving Jak to make his way around to the right.
The albino took off, using the shadows as cover. His dark camou clothing kept him well hidden, and his face, hands and hair were streaked with mud, disguising the usually all-too-conspicuous white. He kept low to the ground, running swiftly and lightly in the way he had learned as a youngster in the bayou. He passed shacks where the windows were open to the outside, and could hear the animal sounds of rutting humans or the contented snores of sleepers from within. Whichever, he was careful not to distur
b them, nor to kick up dust when he passed the doorways to huts that were covered only by haphazardly hung pieces of old sacking.
It was a twisting route, as the paths through the ville were winding and not in any kind of order that could be described as a road. Once or twice Jak nearly lost his bearings, and hoped that the less experienced Dean hadn't become hopelessly lost.
Rounding a corner, Jak got the sec man in his sights. He was approaching him from an angle and from behind. If he was quiet enough, it was doubtful that the sec man would ever feel the knife as it slipped between his ribs and punctured his heart.
Stealthily Jak moved in. He was less than three feet behind the man, and poised to strike, when he heard a muffled groan from the other end of the veranda. It startled Jak's target out of his slumber, and he sprang to his feet, looking around in confusion.
It was obvious that Dean had found his way to his target and taken care of him. It was just unfortunate that his route had turned out to be a fraction easier than Jak's, and his chill had been achieved more quickly.
The sec man turned toward the far end of the veranda and raised his blaster.
He didn't speak or make a sound, so there was still a chance to keep things under cover, as long as Jak acted quickly.
Springing forward, Jak reached up while in midair. He was shorter than the sec man and had the disadvantage of being on a lower level, the veranda forming a six-inch platform around the house. But he had the element of surprise.
If the sec men in this pesthole had been more familiar with keeping prisoners, and in being attacked from the outside with any degree of regularity, then it was certain that Jak's task would have been well-nigh impossible. The sec man would have been expecting an attack to parallel Dean's on his colleague.
Instead he was an easy prey. Jak's hand snaked out in the darkness, grabbing the man's straggling blond hair and jerking back hard. A surprised gasp was all that escaped his lips before he fell into Jak and onto the knife as it slipped between his ribs and punctured his vital organs.