“Uh-huh,” Mildred said.
She agreed with the need for central authority, as far as that went. Though she wasn’t sure Amity Springs really needed anything more formal than what Dark Lady provided.
But Mildred knew that he had no idea of what the Deathlands could bring to them.
She shook her head.
“Do you disagree?” he asked.
“Not really,” she said, which was true enough.
The fact was, she wasn’t sure what the right answer was to the dilemma he’d proposed. She certainly knew it was real.
“Understand,” he said. “Dark Lady cares deeply for the people of Amity Springs. In action as well as thought. That is a given. What we can and do differ over is how best to secure their future.”
“So what’s your solution?”
“To the Dark Lady problem?”
“Yes.”
“Ideally, to buy her out and let her do whatever she chooses, go or stay,” he said.
“She’ll never sell,” Mildred said before she realized that was what she thought.
He sighed and looked pained. If that was fake, Madame Zaroza was missing out on a gifted performer.
“We shall try our best to get her to do so,” he said. “After that, well, I think we’ll shoot that catamount when it comes to us.”
Her eyes narrowed. Just another vivid shit-kicker figure of speech, or was he telling more than he intended?
It could be that lethal threats to Dark Lady didn’t all come from outside Amity Springs.
He stood. “And now, if you’ll excuse me... Yes?”
The last was directed past her, at the door that opened out toward the main yard and the street beyond. Mildred turned in her chair.
A wild-haired figure with shabby work clothes and a scraggly beard stood apologetically half in the doorway. Mildred recognized the ville’s loquacious coffin-maker, who chose to go by the named Coffin.
“Sorry to bother you, sir, ma’am.”
He looked at Mildred.
“You’re wanted back at the Library Lounge pronto. Your friends been looking all over for you.”
* * *
T
HE
SUN
WAS
heading for the far end of Nukem Flats when she followed the Asian-looking carpenter into the yard. It bustled with activity as drivers and stable hands unhitched horses from several wags, to lead toward the barn in the back to pass the night. The drivers themselves would doubtless end up in the Library Lounge, sooner rather than later.
Something brushed up against Mildred’s arm. She turned to see Coffin trying to measure her with a length of cloth tape.
She batted the shabby fabric ribbon away as if it was glowing radioactive. “Hey, now, what the Hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Just taking your measurements, ma’am,” he said. “You know—just in case.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“The end comes to us all. No shame in being prepared.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Baron.”
When Trumbo walked into what Sand called her Grand Salon, the room was full of the reek of pot, wine and glandular secretions. The smoke hung in a greenish haze from waist height to the dark brown rafters.
The Baron of Joker Creek was lounging in her regal chair, with that repellent oily Arcane draped over one side of her and a half-naked redheaded woman named Silky on the other. Trumbo tamped down his disgust hard. He had a mission.
Sand lolled her head over her shoulder to blink myopically at him. Her lips were soft and moist, her cheeks flushed. Her eyes were bloodshot. Disgusting, he thought. If only you knew what you were doing to yourself....
“What?” she demanded. Arcane giggled. Silky peered coyly around her baron’s bulk.
“I just received a report of a possible Crazy Dogs’ patrol sneaking around on the bluffs,” he said.
She blinked at him twice, slowly. Her eyes were huge.
Then she popped to her feet. Silky melted away from her. Arcane was unceremoniously dumped on his skinny butt on the maroon tile floor.
“Then what are we waiting for?” she demanded hoarsely.
She glared around at her hangers-on. They looked at her with a mixture of fear and partly repressed amusement, as if they wished to believe this was a joke, and didn’t want to be seen not to get it, or laugh at the right time.
Arcane whimpered. She tapped him on top of his curly haired head.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she said. “I knew the Dogs would try us again, after our deliciously dark and mysterious friends made their spy disappear. They need to be taught a sharp, hard lesson now. Because if they somehow take over, they’ll really give you something to snivel about.”
Trumbo wrestled to keep his emotions off his face. Feelings were unmanly anyway. Showing them was as bad as dropping your pants and showing a scar where your balls should be.
He loathed this den of repulsive muties—and degenerates who were worse freaks than even muties were. Yet he adored this baron.
How I wish I could take her away from all this, he thought. Make her see this isn’t the right way to live.
She’d lacked a strong man’s hand guiding her life for so long she’d come to imagine she didn’t need it. He knew he was the man to help her see light.
Arcane got to his feet with surprising speed.
“The farmers’ dogs’ve been barking for a while now,” he said, pouting only a little. “Mebbe that’s the Crazy Dogs they’re responding to.”
“Likely,” Sand said, turning and putting her hands on her hips as if to evaluate him. Trumbo wondered why she couldn’t see he was worthless.
“Will you fight them for me?”
“Of course.”
She reached out and pinched his cheek, lightly furred with what it disturbed Trumbo to have to call a beard.
“That’s my good boy,” the baron purred. “I knew I could count on you.”
“Always.”
Sand turned away and bent. From somewhere in the tangle of cushions and wisps of fabric and smoke she produced an ebony cane. She flourished it in the air.
“Gather your troops, Trumbo,” she commanded. “I shall lead you into battle personally. As soon as I find my boots. And some pants.”
He nodded. “Yes, Baron.”
And hoped she didn’t see the secret smile he couldn’t keep off his face.
* * *
“O
KAY
,”
SAID
K
RYSTY
,
lowering Ryan’s Navy longeye. “I see Ryan’s signal. They’re ready to move on the house.”
“I hear dogs barking down below,” Ricky said worriedly. “Might they give them away?”
“Then we’d best get to using these toys Dark Lady gave us, shouldn’t we?” Mildred said, picking up a firefight simulator from the dirt beside where she, Krysty, Ricky and Doc crouched or lay on the ridge overlooking Sand’s domain. It was basically a string of firecrackers rolled into a ball and rigged with an initiator that would start them going off in series. It was meant to mimic the noise and flashes of a serious shootout.
They had concealed themselves a bit east of the baron’s big house, not far from where Ryan had shot the Crazy Dogs’ spotter.
There was no moon this night. It was a waving sliver and had set early, which was to their advantage.
“J.B. will be eating himself with jealousy that he doesn’t get to light these puppies,” Mildred said.
“Doubtless he is sufficiently occupied at the moment to overcome that emotion,” said Doc, who was crouched back from the lip of the cliff with his big LeMat clutched in one bony hand.
“Are we ready?” Krysty asked softly.
She wasn’t happy at having to split up like this, but staging a diversion was the best shot at letting Ryan, J.B. and Jak get in and out safely.
“Oh, yeah,” Mildred said.
Doc nodded. “Indeed.”
Ricky was facedown beside Krysty, pointing his DeLisle into the Basin. Though he could be high-strung in some ways, she had learned to trust his steadiness where blasters were concerned. She wasn’t worried he’d loose off a shot out of overeagerness, or worse by accident, and alert the baron and her sec men prematurely. And anyway, the longblaster was so effectively sound suppressed they’d never hear it if he did.
He twisted around and looked at her. His head moved slightly up and down as he swallowed in nervousness. Clearly he was crowding his mind with everything that could go wrong for their three friends below.
It was a lot, but Krysty had practice putting that knowledge out of her head. It was a necessary skill to lead the life she had chosen. She gave him a smile of encouragement.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
She looked at Mildred and grinned.
“Do it,” she said.
Mildred pulled the string initiator hard. The device in her hand began to fizz. She stood and heaved it as far west as she could, aiming it to land as close to the cliff top as she dared.
They all hunkered down then, and waited. In a moment all hell broke loose. Lights flared and danced. Smoke roiled. The noise made Krysty wince.
She grinned at Mildred. The stocky woman was already prepping a second simulator. She was clearly having a lot of fun.
And then from the night, off toward the stream cut that flowed down past the big house, more dancing lights appeared.
Unmistakable muzzle-flashes were pointed their way.
Krysty ducked in alarm as a bullet cracked over her head.
“We’re under attack for real!” she shouted, hoping to be heard above the din.
* * *
T
HE
TOP
OF
the bluffs, a good quarter mile away, suddenly lit up with bright flashes, and it sounded as though several blasters were shooting.
“Right,” Ryan said, leaning back around the front of the small shed he crouched behind. “Time to move.”
He signaled to Jak. “We best go with a purpose. People will be starting to rouse and look outside any moment.”
The albino had already slipped around the far side. They had crossed the creek downstream from the settlement and had made their way near the foot of the bluffs before Ryan signaled they were in place. They had avoided detection so far.
Except by the rad-blasted dogs. There was one barking vigorously at them from not forty yards away. Apparently folks around here weren’t suspicious of such—no doubt coyotes, armored or otherwise, visited on a regular basis, and they knew by the sounds of their watch animals just how immediate a threat was. That had led Ryan, J.B. and Jak to take longer than they otherwise might have, steering wide enough of barking dogs that the animals didn’t take it up from general alert to condition red.
“They’re putting on a good show up there,” J.B. murmured, nodding toward the bluffs to the north.
There certainly was a lot of racket going on. It really did sound like blasters.
“Dark Lady gave us enough of those things,” Ryan said. “They must’ve found the old arsenal.”
“Yeah,” J.B. said a bit wistfully, and slipped around the corner of the shed. Ryan knew he wished he could be setting them off, but his real talents were needed down here.
Trotting bent over, Ryan followed him toward the big house. Light was pouring out of every window. He had his Steyr longblaster strapped across his back, where naturally the muzzle banged him on the kidneys with every step. Couldn’t be helped; he didn’t know he’d have call to use a scoped long-range blaster, but then, he couldn’t know he
wouldn’t
.
Ahead of him J.B. was running along the same way. He had his Uzi strapped over his back and his M-4000 scattergun in his hands. Ryan hoped they wouldn’t be spotted before they reached the main house, or things could get loud down here, too, in a hurry.
The farmers could be another issue. They ran along the bank of an irrigation ditch flanking a field full of rows of low mounds of what had to be some early rising crops. Ryan had no idea what. He wasn’t any dirt farmer.
But even the lowliest sodbuster could chill you deader than dog dirt, if he blasted you from ambush with a shotgun, or caught you in the head with an ax. Ryan, J.B. and Jak just had to hope Sand’s subjects had the sense not to go sticking their heads out like triple stupes when blasters were barking nearby.
They made it away from the last huts into the fifty yards or so of cleared space between them and Sand’s Casa de Broma without being gunned down, having their heads split or actively chased by dogs. Nobody sounded any alarms, either.
Ryan and J.B. crossed the creek just short of the house. The water wasn’t deep but it was cold.
Jak waited for them around the nearest corner from the front. They joined him and pressed close against the house to minimize visibility, although there was nothing like cover here. The yard-thick walls were cool and smelled like cool earth.
“Out back,” the albino said as Ryan leaned close to hear above the noise. “Watching.”
By which Ryan understood him to mean some of the house’s occupants were behind the house gazing up at the heights. Great, he thought. The fewer people inside, the less chance of discovery. Or of serious resistance if they were discovered.
Of course they had no way of knowing whether Trumbo and his sec men had risen to the bait. But if they hadn’t gone charging out to engage an intruder making that much noise, how big a threat were they?
At least as far as Ryan could tell, no shots were coming from the house. If Trumbo or the baron had decided to hunker down and defend the place, that would likely be the case.
He looked at J.B. and gestured toward the front door. Then he signed for Jak to keep watch toward the rear of the house.
J.B. went to work on the lock on the massive front door. Ryan may have been the one to carry an emergency lock-pick kit in the heel of his boot, but it was J.B. who possessed true artistry with locks, as he did with most things intricate and mechanical.
Ryan stood beside the door, facing out. He had his Scout unslung and gripped in both hands now. With the light from the front windows, little dimmed by the filmy curtains that nonetheless made it impossible to see inside, he was as concerned with someone farther down the creek spotting and firing on them.
It took J.B. scarcely more time to open the lock than that taken by inserting his tools. He straightened and gave his friend a quick grin.
Ryan grinned back and nodded. J.B. put his lock-pick away and took up his shotgun.
The one-eyed man gestured Jak over. The albino was next to Ryan in an eye blink. Even if it hadn’t been for the Hell continuing to bust loose from above and echoing along the bluffs, Ryan knew he wouldn’t have heard him come.
“First?” Jak asked with ill-concealed eagerness.
“I go first,” Ryan said. “Then J.B. Watch our backs until we give you the sign to come in.”
Jak nodded.
Holding his Steyr by the pistol grip in his right hand, Ryan put his left on the door handle. J.B. asked a question with his cocked eyebrow: Why not your handblaster?
Ryan just grinned. After an instant J.B. gave the minutest of nods.
Gently, Ryan twisted the knob until he felt the latch disengage. Then he yanked it open and thrust himself into the front room, leading with his blaster barrel.