“You know the one,” Krysty said. “I’ve seen it on old posters and bumper stickers. ‘Peace through superior firepower.’”
A corner of Mildred’s mouth stretched open, showing closed white teeth. “I don’t want to burst your bubble, but I think that the end result of that particular way of thinking was—”
She swept a hand around, encompassing not just the
half-collapsed and gutted office building, but the whole shattered ruins of St. Lou and the entire world beyond.
“—this. The big nuke. The earth-shakers nukes and the killer quakes. The storms and skydark. The muties, the pain, the acid rain. The Deathlands.”
Ryan rubbed his chin.
“I see your point, Mildred,” he said. “But I calculate mebbe Krysty’s onto something. If we get the drop on them, they might just be reasonable.
Might.
”
“It does make sense, my dear Ryan!” Doc exclaimed. “After all, these are coldhearts we are speaking of. What are the scavvies, after all? Why,
traders.
They must engage in commerce to translate their salvaged goods into wealth they can use. And commerce entails the ability to engage in peaceful exchanges.”
“Were plenty willing to take us down,” Jak said.
“To be sure. But we had intruded on their territory, which as you know scavvies tend to protect as vigorously as wolves. And, frankly, they saw us as prey. They’re compelled to act differently under the blasters of a place like Soulardville or Brewery.”
“But we aren’t in Soulard or B-ville,” Ryan said.
“Hence we return to Dr. Wyeth’s splendid point.”
“Wait, it wasn’t my—”
“Forgive me—the lovely and lethally talented Krysty’s point. A momentary confusion.”
“So, you’re in favor of the ‘peace through superior firepower’ thing?” Krysty asked. “Got me confused now.”
“Why not?” Ryan said, slapping his thigh. He was careful not to do so loud enough to make a noise that would carry beyond the walls of their hideout. Dust rose from fabric stretched taut over his thigh where he squatted. “They’re careless. We can get close double-easy, set up a
cross fire. Then I step out and open what we might term negotiations.”
“Perfect plan, lover,” Krysty said. “Except for one small detail.”
“What detail?”
“Not you,” she said. “Me.”
“A
ND
I
WAS
triple-stupe enough to go for it,” Ryan muttered from behind the scope of his Steyr. He lay on his belly atop the truncated parking structure, with the longblaster’s forestock propped on his backpack.
He had to use all his iron will to keep from squirming in impotent frustration at what he saw through the scope. He didn’t dare drop the hammer for fear of hitting Krysty.
It had seemed to make sense. Krysty had pointed out that this particular bunch—just a part of McKinnick’s band, they gathered, even after the multisided battle of a few days before had thinned their ranks considerably—was exclusively male. What with one thing or another, they might just leap reflexively into action if Ryan strolled from nowhere into their midst. He cut a pretty threatening figure.
Whereas, as Krysty pointed out with her usual blunt appreciation of reality, when a woman who looked like her strolled into their camp circle, immediate fighting to the death wasn’t the first thing that would cross their minds. And Ryan had to admit, she had powerful skills of persuasion. It might even work.
“Yeah,” he grunted. “Like she used on me.”
And it had been a fair enough plan. He knew Krysty had a point, both about the scavvies’ lesser likelihood of jumping to code red if a woman appeared in their midst
and her implicit point that she would be more diplomatic than Ryan.
But they’d all overlooked one thing: the asshole factor.
And McKinnick was definitely one
huge
asshole. Krysty screamed.
Ryan’s finger tightened on the trigger. He almost risked a shot through Krysty’s shoulder, hoping the blow-through would wound McKinnick somewhere vital, or at least make him let her go so Ryan or one of the others hiding in the rubble could chill him.
Instead the huge scavvie dropped the struggling redhead as if she were hot. Krysty went flat on her face. Red-faced, the giant scavvie leader roared as he reached to his crotch and ripped something free. It drew an arc of red skyward as he flung his arm up.
Krysty’s little hider knife. The coldheart’s grip had pinned her right arm, but she’d put her left to good use.
Without thought or even correcting aim Ryan triggered a shot. It was pure luck he didn’t pull off target. The scavvie lord roared as the 7.62 mm slug plowed through his right shoulder in a spray of blood. The little lockback folder knife dropped from his grasp.
The three companions still hidden in the rubble had been trading shots with the surviving scavvies, who had all gone to ground the moment festivities began. Now all three opened up on the suddenly exposed McKinnick. The giant reeled back as a charge of double-00 buck hit him in the capacious belly. Dust puffed from the front of his grimy outfit as Jak’s .357 blaster joined Doc’s booming black-powder blaster.
A new color began to join the urban camo grays, blacks,
whites and urban body-filth browns of McKinnick’s shirt: red. Dull red patches, glistening moistly in the near-horizontal rays of the final sun, grew all across the vast front of the man.
He went to his knees, then he reversed grip on his huge saw-backed Bowie and prepared to plunge it into Krysty’s exposed back. The redhead was facedown, hugging the dust-covered ground. So much as raising her head would be instantly lethal in the horizontal lead storm going on in that little cup of rubble.
As the huge knife descended, the top rear of McKinnick’s keg head came off. A vast swatch of filthy tangled red hair fluttered like a broken bird wing and flipped right into the little campfire, where it began to send out a cloud of greenish smoke.
Ryan imagined he could see Krysty’s eyes go wide as the knife clattered harmlessly off a chunk of rubble six inches from her nose. Then most of her was obscured from sight as the mountain of man, filth and malice fell atop her.
Most of his brain promptly plopped out of the gap in the crown of the scavvie chief’s head. It was a sort of dirty white, like none-too-clean bread dough.
Silence landed like a dud rocket. Ryan had jacked the bolt of his Steyr and sought targets, but none presented themselves. The surviving scavvies were hugging to the rubble.
He heard a plaintive voice rise up. “Who
are
you people? What the fuck do you want?”
The big man stirred. Instantly Ryan centered him in his telescopic sight, but he wasn’t sure exactly where to aim. If having his brains blown out didn’t chill him, where was he supposed to shoot him? he wondered.
Then the big body flopped limply to the side, raising a
billow of dust about the same color as his voided brains. Apparently unfazed, Krysty rose to her feet and dusted herself off.
“We want to talk,” she called. “Nothing but. If you’d just listened to me the first time, none of this would of happened.”
A hand waved nervously above a block of concrete that was smooth on the two visible sides and uneven on the tilted top. “Don’t shoot,” the same voice said, more pleading than anything.
“If you behave yourselves,” Krysty said. She had drawn her own snub-nosed .38 and held it before her in a two-handed grip. It was angled toward the ground but ready to whip up and cut loose in an eye blink.
The scavvie’s other hand came up. As if the owner was chinning himself on the sky, a whole lanky shape unfolded from concealment. It was the blond dude with the angry scar whom McKinnick had called Sanchez.
“Wasn’t us who started this,” he said. “Was him. That outsized piece of glowing night shit.”
“Handy excuse,” Krysty said, “although, yeah, technically it was. So don’t you make the same mistake he did.”
“Somebody’s out there with a longblaster,” the blond man said accusingly. “Sniping.”
“That would be Ryan,” Krysty said. “My man.”
“Thought you said he was chilled.”
“I said he didn’t make it,” she said. “And he didn’t. He’s still a couple hundred yards short of here.”
“All right. Triple-funny. Can the rest of us stand up?”
“Slowly, carefully, hands in view at all times. Cross us and die. You know the drill.”
“Yeah.” He stepped around and plopped his lanky butt on the block he’d taken cover behind. Nine or ten com
rades stood up, then stood looking sheepish with hands in the air.
“So,” Sanchez said, “how can we help you?”
“We heard a woman came here,” Krysty said. “Black woman. Young, mebbe seventeen. Good-looking, strong built. Green eyes.”
“Oh, shit,” a short skinny guy with a huge nose said. “I knew she was trouble.”
“We all did, Grip,” Sanchez said. “Except that fat ass-cheese McKinnick.”
Sanchez hocked and spit. The phlegm glob traced a high green arc in the evening air and landed with astonishing accuracy on the middle of the fallen leader’s upturned rump. Of course, Ryan admitted to himself, that made a double-wide target.
“Emerald, right?” Sanchez said. “Out of Soulardville? Turned out to be the baron’s daughter. That the one?”
“Yes.”
He sighed and slumped. “Said she wanted to throw in with us. We were cool with that—most of us. She carried a .44 Mag blaster and looked like she knew what to do with it. Looked like she could, you know? But then McKinnick had to go and try to rape her in the middle of the night.”
“What happened?” Krysty asked.
Sanchez laughed uproariously. “Sorry. She did the same thing you did, Red. Stuck him with a little hideout knife. Didn’t nail him in the balls like you did. Only got him in the gut.”
He shook his head in disgust. “All that fucking belly flab, he might’s well have been wearing a steel vest. Didn’t do more than set him to bleeding like a pig and screaming like a little girl. She went bounding off into the night like a jackrabbit.”
“Which way?”
Sanchez jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “East. Toward the riverfront.”
“That was her second mistake,” another scavvie said, “after trusting McKinnick. Stickies that way. Lousy with ’em.”
“She’s chilled now, sure,” Sanchez said.
“You saw her die? Seen the body?”
“Well, no. But stickies don’t usually leave much identifiable, you know what I mean. But no, ma’am, we didn’t see her die.”
From behind them came Jak’s voice. “That all,” he called. The scavvies jumped and turned. “No holdouts.”
“All right, Jak. Ace. You all can come out.”
Doc rose from the rubble like a scarecrow on a pole, grinning over his colossal handblaster. Mildred stepped out holding the scattergun at her waist, a fierce, determined look on her face. Jak appeared at the far side of the depression in the rubble and perched on what was probably a short length of wall foundation, holding his Python tipped skyward in his hand and a thumb on the hammer spur.
Sanchez’s eyes were flicking this way and that. He reminded Krysty of a mouse caught in a corner, looking for which way to bolt.
“Look,” he said, “it ain’t healthy to be out here after the sun goes down. We want to get back to our base before it comes on full night and the stickies and cannies all come out to feast.”
He paused. “You folks enjoy living more than screaming, you might consider doing the same.”
“Looks like you intended to camp out right here,” Mildred said.
“That was McKinnick,” Sanchez said. “Notice where he is now.”
“Suppose you tell me exactly what happened,” Krysty said. “Then we can all go make our respective sleeping arrangements. You can start with after Emerald stuck your boss and ran.”
“All right. We chased her. We were working down around Olive Street. Some sweet salvage around there—anyway, she lit out north across Washington, that’s the street that leads off over the Eads Bridge. She cut down toward the river, under 70 to LaClede’s Landing.”
“Crazy,” the little dude with the nose said. “That’s like Cannie Central. And then all them stickies, live up in the old
Admiral.
Fucked-up place to be anytime. Worse after dark.”
“We saw cannies skulking around, then we heard her scream.” Sanchez shook his head. “Listen, not even McKinnick with the hole in his gut, not to mention his pride, wanted to press on any further. Girl’s dead, and that’s a fact. Or she wishes she was.”
“When was this?”
“Couple weeks ago, mebbe. I swear, Red, that’s the truth. And it was never our idea to try to run you people down. That was McKinnick right through.”
“Bullshit,” Krysty said. “We all saw you. You were eager as cannies to run us down. But that bullet’s long since left the blaster.”
She studied him a moment. “All right,” she said. “What you say about Emerald rings true, and you have no reason to lie about that I can see. So go ahead and clear out now. And one word of advice—stay out of our road from here on. Your shadow falls across our path again, you’ll wish the stickies had you. Forget the cannies.”
Sanchez moistened his lips with a pale tongue. “I believe you, Red,” he said. His eyes flicked toward his boss’s prone body. “Can we, uh—”
“Don’t press your luck,” Mildred said.
“Right. So—”
“Pick up your traps and feel lucky we’re in a forgiving mood,” Krysty said.
“You got it. And—have a nice day.”
“S
O WHERE DO
we stand?” Ryan asked.
They’d rendezvoused back in the partial structure from where they’d first scoped the scavvie camp. It had only a single intact stairwell, and a good enough roof, protection against things like acid rain and screamwings. It offered a readily defensible place to hide.
As they talked they ate dried fruit they’d brought from Soulardville. Krysty and the others filled Ryan in on their conversation with Sanchez and the others.
“So that’s it,” Mildred said. “She’s dead.”
Ryan arched a brow at her. “Really? You know that for a fact?”
Mildred blinked. Her face was just visible in the last blood-colored light of day.
“Well, they said the cannies caught her.”
Ryan looked at Krysty. “You asked if they’d seen her body, right?”
“Right. And they hadn’t. I’m thinking the same thing you are—our girl isn’t going to be easy to kill.”
“But—cannies.” Mildred shuddered. “They’re pretty serious about keeping hold of their food, once they catch it.”
“Like scavvies said,” Jak added. “She hopes she dead.”
“If she didn’t escape,” Krysty said.
“Isn’t that a big assumption?” Mildred asked.
“No more than that she’s chilled,” Ryan said.
“Come on. We know she’s smart and tough. She’s still a girl.”
Ryan, Krysty and Jak all looked blankly at her. Doc chuckled.
“Never forget,” he said, “we are just visitors here. Our boon companions grew up in the Deathlands. However pampered Princess Emerald may have been, however much the hapless baron may have wanted to hang on to his little girl, she was by contemporary standards an adult. And may very well be alive.”
“You seriously think she had a chance to escape from cannibals?”
“She got away from McKinnick and his playmates,” Ryan said. “Let’s all remember something—we’ve got a job to do. And that job doesn’t end until we lay hands on either the princess or irrefutable evidence she’s no longer among the breathing.”
“You’re not saying you still take this job thing seriously?” Mildred said in tones of disbelief. “After what that monster Brother Joseph did?”
“Don’t forget he’s got J.B.,” Krysty said.
“But we have to try to rescue him anyway! Why not, why don’t we just throw over this nonsense and head back and break him out.”
“That’s a mighty well-secured ville,” Ryan said.
“But Brother Joseph’s feeding the people to those muties one at a time. Wouldn’t they be eager to help us if we saved them from that?”
“Seems to me you got it exactly backward, Mildred.”
“What do you mean?”
“You saw those people,” Krysty said. “When they sacrificed that poor child, they seemed…eager, ecstatic. They think Brother Joseph is saving them from that. Allowing the few to pay the blood-price for the many.”
“Anyway,” Ryan said sharply, “we’re letting our barrels
wander way off-target, here. The point is, we took the job. We sealed the deal. So we deliver. Simple as that.”
“But the deal was tainted!” Mildred exclaimed.
Ryan shrugged. “I tried that argument and lost. In the end we took the jack and we took the bargain, even if it turned out to be the devil in disguise on the other side of the counter. It’s still our word given. That’s our bond.”
“What now?” Jak asked. “Into cannie-land?”
“Just wandering around their turf seems like a poor proposition,” Ryan said.
“Succinctly put,” Doc said.
“Out there!” Mildred called.
Everybody looked toward her. A faint silvery glow was streaming in the open spaces where wall-size windows had been, molding her round cheeks and forehead in mercury. The crescent moon was rising over the bluffs across the big river.
She pointed. “Lights. Down there toward the river.”
Ryan duck-walked up to hunker at her side. “Bonfires,” he said. It seemed figures were moving across the brightest fire, about a quarter mile off in an area of buildings that seemed, at least in the thickening darkness, mostly intact. After a moment he turned back to his circle of friends.
“We need information,” he said. “So we don’t just skip in blind.”
“What?” Jak said. “Just find cannie and ask?”
Ryan felt a slow smile cross his face.
“Shit, yeah,” he said. “That’s exactly what we’re gonna do.”