He’d suggested holding a knife to her throat to discourage her making noise. The others nixed that at once. Emerald had a habit of reacting badly to that sort of thing, and just because she slept nude didn’t mean she didn’t have her favorite nasty little hideout knife concealed in her bedding where she could get at it double-quick.
Instead he applied strong pressure to her carotid artery with his forearm, just as he’d been drilled by Mildred. The cloth handkerchief muffled the noises she made struggling with him. Keeping his right hand slightly cupped prevented her getting a grip on his palm with her teeth. He really didn’t want that to happen.
Just as he had done when Ryan demonstrated the
sleeper hold on him, the girl suddenly slumped into the limpness of unconsciousness. Not trusting her deep cunning—another thing he admired about her—he kept up the hold for a slow count of ten after she went under.
Pulling another handkerchief from inside his shirt, Jak quickly folded it thin, looped it over her mouth and tied it at her nape. He took a black cloth bag from his belt and pulled it over her head, cinching it around her throat and tying it off just enough so it wouldn’t come up over her strong chin, not tight enough to interfere with her breathing. He was glad her coarse, slightly kinked black hair was tied back; otherwise he’d have had a triple-bad time trying to corral it. He drew her limp arms behind her, fastened her wrists together with a noose of triple-strong predark nylon fishing line and tied that off.
His first thought, as he jumped to his feet, was to hope she hadn’t noticed his boner pressing against her bare back through the fabric of his fly. The very thought embarrassed him ridiculously.
The way her large breasts lolled on her rib cage when he pulled her onto her back didn’t help any. Steeling himself, he undid the tail end of the rope from around his waist, made a quick loop of it beneath her arms and her breasts, then putting hands under her armpits, dragged her over beneath the hole.
He tugged the rope three times, hard. In a moment it tautened. The princess was drawn slowly up through the hole in the roof.
He didn’t even try to stop himself staring at her nude, limp body as Ryan and Krysty, waiting overhead, hoisted her up. Some things were just too much to ask of a man.
For an eternity he waited while his friends untied the climbing rope from the hopefully still-unconscious cap
tive and made sure she was securely bound and gagged for extraction.
He heard them come back to the hole above. He crouched by the pallet, looking up in anticipation of seeing the end of his lifeline snake back down toward him.
And from just the other side of the screen a young male voice said, “Em? You asleep? There’s something Lana and I’d like you to take a look at.”
Jak froze. Without a whisper of sound he drew his big trench knife with the studded knuckle bow. If he could cut the newcomer’s throat with one swift stroke, then hold him tight enough to keep him from breaking away or noisily kicking over stuff as he bled to death, there was a chance they might still get out of here alive and with their captive without the alarm being raised. Sure, it was the same chance as a moth caught in the middle of a forest fire, or close. But a chance.
He heard the scuffle of leather on concrete as the man approached the end of the two-sectioned privacy screen. Six heartbeats more and he’d peek around and see Jak.
“Em? You there?”
The guy was clueless. Jak gathered himself to strike. Any instant…
Away off in the night a woman’s shrill voice screamed, “Stickies! Help! Stickies got me!”
Jak just had time and presence of mind to flatten himself behind the princess’s now considerably disordered pile of bedclothes. He blanked his mind and tried to think himself part of the floor. It was an old hunter’s trick. He’d known it to work, too. Not just on animals or even muties. Men, too.
Jak made himself relax. He believed an enemy could feel his tension that close up, if not smell fear. But he was ready to snap into action at the first sign of discovery.
Chilling or running like hot nuke death was after him, whichever.
Instead he heard a gasp. Then, “Shit! She’s gone!”
“That must be her!” another male voice asked, as the terrified woman screamed again, wordlessly this time, rising and falling and quivering with terror.
Footfalls pounded away from Jak. Men and women shouted. He heard clacks and clatters as scavvies snatched up blasters and checked for chambered rounds.
Jak didn’t wait around, nor did his two friends, who were crouching on the vacant floor above. The rope came wriggling down. He leaped and caught it. Rather than have them haul him up he scaled it like a squirrel up a beech tree.
Just before he vanished up through the hole he saw scavvies clutching blasters running toward a stairwell at the far end of the floor. The screen that had stood between him and the lit lantern was down. He saw the scavvies wore whatever they slept in, from fully dressed to T-shirts and skivvies to skin. He noticed one girl with ash-blond hair hanging to the small of her back and carrying a lever-action carbine, who had a triple-nice rear.
“No time to sightsee,” Krysty said from right over his head, her voice low.
Without comment Jak scrambled up to the fourth floor.
G
RUNTING
, Ryan paid out line.
“This girl’s been eating regular, anyway,” he muttered. Even with Jak’s and Krysty’s aid, lowering her deadweight the thirty-some feet to the ground was a challenge. “Ought to call her Princess Lead-Butt.”
“Shh,” Krysty said.
The line went slack. Ryan held up. A tug, and he let
out more of the rope. A brief delay, then three sharp tugs on the rope. With a sigh of relief he felt the rope go completely loose.
Peering over, he saw Doc’s scarecrow figure kneeling to lower the nude and still-unmoving form of Princess Emerald to the gravel of the yard against the foot of the factory wall. Along with darkening his face, Doc had chosen to apply lamp-black to his silver-white hair as well. It made it stick out in weird random spikes, as if his head were some kind of glistening mutie burr.
From just a few feet away it wasn’t easy to make out even that little detail. They’d waited for the moon to set and the night was cave-dark. Also clouds had started to roll in from the east as the companions watched Jak do his human-fly routine up the blank wall.
Though Ryan didn’t much care for doing it that way, Krysty and Jak belayed for him while he slid down the rope. He was heaviest, and it was best to have both the others on the line, even if it was tied off to a pipe coming up through the floor that had somehow escaped the ravages of over a century of scavvies. Possibly because cast iron was such a triple-bitch to cut.
Next came Krysty, dropping the last few feet like a leopard. Then Jak rappelled down, having quickly untied the rope and looped it around the pipe so it could support his weight on the way down.
As he let go one end and pulled the line down after him rain suddenly dumped on their heads.
“It will help cover our egress,” Doc said helpfully.
“Still sucks rads.” Ryan stooped, folded the still-unconscious captive over his shoulder and set off running. Wet gravel squeaked beneath his boots. The raindrops looked like little artillery shells going off when they hit the ground.
“But the plan…” Krysty called softly, running up alongside him. He heard both Jak and Doc thudding after him. Jak could actually have bounded past like a deer had he cared to; he guessed the kid was taking it on himself to pull rear guard.
The original plan was for two of them to carry the captive. While certain other things were supposed to happen that were now unlikely.
“It’s shot in the head,” he said. “We go to Plan B.”
“There’s a Plan B?” Krysty asked.
“Run for the boat,” he said, “and hope like hell Mildred doesn’t dawdle!”
“F
UCK,” THEY HEARD
, muffled but unmistakably by the brush and the rain. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“Actually, it’s a sort of pleasant accompaniment to the rain,” Krysty said. She was kneeling with her not inconsiderable weight on the small of Emerald’s back, pinning her bare belly on the now slimy mud and grass a few feet from the river.
With a splash Ryan, Jak and Doc finished manhandling the whaleboat back into the water.
Mildred emerged from the brush. She was soaked, as they all were. Her plaits stuck out. It looked as if somebody had been slapping her in the face with branches. Which, Ryan reckoned, had more or less been the way of it.
“Fuck,” she said a final time. “So much for getting them to waste a bunch of time tramping through the woods. When I couldn’t light the bonfire, they figured out they’d been jobbed right away. They’re heading straight here.”
“They spotted you?” Krysty asked.
“No.”
“The river!” Doc exclaimed with a snap of his long,
bony figures. “If they suspect a raid of some sort, the natural escape route lies…right here, actually.”
“Sound like buffalo herd stampeding,” Jak said critically. As if the boat going in the Sippi hadn’t been even louder than the racket Mildred made approaching their rendezvous point.
“It’s nothing compared to the noise the scavvies’re making,” she said, stopping to bend over, brace herself and wheeze. “They couldn’t hear an elephant stampede with a brass band playing on their backs. They make me look like Jak in the woods.”
“Hey, now,” Jak said.
“Relax, Mildred,” Krysty said. “Not your fault it decided to piss down rain.”
The plan had called for Mildred to augment her phony screams for help with a big fire set out in the woods, to put visions of stickie kidnappings in the heads of Dan E.’s scavvies. Fortunately she’d screamed convincingly enough to get much of the crew to turn out and cover her friends getting clear of the derelict factory with their prize. Less fortunately the sudden downpour had trashed all hopes of starting a good fire.
“Help me get the girl in the boat,” Ryan told Doc. “You settle down now, Princess. You try to kick me again, I’ll put a shotgun butt up behind your ear in a none-too-gentle manner.”
“I’m impressed you managed to find your way here so quickly,” Krysty said, enfolding the panting physician in a quick fervent hug. “I admit I was worried.”
“At least it’s not raining so hard I didn’t have the lights of Soulardville to home in on,” she said. “Never thought I’d be glad to see sign of that shithole.”
Emerald emitted a squeal of outrage. By way of
retribution Ryan let her drop double-hard on her tailbone in the boat.
The companions got in cautiously after. The most experienced small-boat handler among them, Jak took the stern. He started to rev up the little motor.
“No,” Ryan said. “Cast off and let the current carry us. Use the oars to fend off the bank or the bottom if we have to.”
They did and began to drift south down the Sippi. The angled stubs of the Arch showed gleams of the lights from Soulardville beyond. There were no sounds except the splash of rain in water and patter on skin and wood, and the changeless, ever-changing voice of the mighty river.
Then there was a commotion like an elephant with its tail on fire, not far north of where they had cast off from. They heard voices calling to one another.
“Mmm!” Emerald said urgently.
Krysty sighed. She handed her oar to Mildred. Ryan had the other, although for the moment they drifted a good fifteen feet from shore. Carefully she removed the hood, revealing the bulging cheeks and furious eyes of a triple-pissed girl.
Krysty drew her snub-nosed Smith & Wesson Model 640 and pointed it at the bridge of the captive’s nose. Emerald’s green eyes went saucer-wide.
“No sounds,” the redhead murmured. “Got that?”
Emerald nodded vigorously.
A quarter mile or so upstream somebody uttered a cry of triumph.
“Found where boat went in water,” Jak said.
The grass had been thick enough that no tracks would show, Ryan knew. But sliding a big boat up and down the bank crushed the grass in a swath so wide even wilderness-challenged types like the scavvies could never miss it,
even in the dark. And the sweep of a pale yellow beam across the river surface showed they had lights, probably bull’s-eye lanterns such as the companions had observed them carrying before.
Their pursuers’ calls quickly turned to consternation and then frustrated fury.
“Fire up the mill,” Ryan called softly to Jak. The rain continued to fall, although not at so vigorous a pace. “It’s not loud. And even if they hear there’s not much they can do about it now.”
“Head across now?” Jak asked.
“No,” Ryan said. “Keep driving us along the shore. The scavvies got some scoped longblasters. If they spot us, one of them might get ideas.”
“Would they chance a shot hitting their friend the princess?”
“Depends on how much she told them of her family history, Doc,” Krysty said. Ryan couldn’t miss the note of sadness in her voice.
“Damn straight,” Mildred declared passionately. “If I was being carried off to be sacrificed to those awful things, I hope one of you would put a bullet through my cranium.”
That dampened the jubilant mood their successful escape had engendered in them worse than the rain. They putted along south at about twice the current’s speed. Before they reached the Martin Luther King bridge Ryan had Jak make for deeper water, farther from the bank.
They knew there’d been stickies around the east end of the bridge. Also Ryan was getting a prickly feeling along the back of his neck about keeping too close to shore, where anybody might nail one of them with an arrow or thrown rock, or even try jumping into the whaleboat from a low overhanging branch.
Just because they had Dan E. and his scavvies on their tail big-time now didn’t mean no one else would make a play for them. In the Deathlands night there were no friends.
Emerald sat amidships with Ryan’s coat around her shoulders. Her gag had been removed, but her hands were still tied. Her ankles had also been close-tied to thwart a leap overboard to freedom, which everybody suspected she’d do if given a half-chance, even if freedom only meant a quick inhalation to fill her lungs with water, and sink down where the most determined screamwing could never get at her….
She saw Ryan looking at her and shook her hair back defiantly. “You real proud of yourselves now?”
“No,” Ryan said. “So, what were you after over there with Dan E. and the scavvies, Princess? A power base to plot your return? A ticket out?”
“Friends,” she said. Suddenly she hung her head. “Just friends. I never had any growing up. I couldn’t. I was the baron’s daughter, and always had to remember how important I was. Although everybody was nice to me all the time. Like they had a choice!
“But Dan and his crew took me in. Treated me nice. Said as long as I pulled my weight and didn’t whine too much I was welcome aboard. They were my friends.”
A tear dropped from her eye. Ryan was actually torn between cry-me-a-river contempt for a spoiled little girl who thought she had it tough, to feeling a certain pang for her genuine depths of loneliness. That and the fact that, nuke dust, she
did
have it tough.
But then she snapped her head up. Her cheek was wet but her eyes blazed like green fire.
“You wouldn’t know anything about friends, would you?” she railed at him.
“Yes,” Krysty said. “He would.”
“They’ll never rest until they track you down!”
“Sweetheart,” Ryan said, “I’m counting on it.”
“So what did Bro Joe offer you, anyway?” she demanded. “Jack? Ammo? Meds? Some of his opium?”
“All those things,” Ryan said. “Plus one more—the life of one of our friends who got hurt and wound up in the care of your healer, Strode.”
“Strode? Is she still all right? What am I saying? Of course she would be. Joseph would never dare fuck with her. He’s a chickenshit at heart. The people love her too much to let him do anything to her. Anyway, he needs her and he knows it.”
“Needs her for what?” Mildred asked.
The girl uttered a wild laugh. “To rule the ville! Duh! He’s no good without a healer, even if he does have some kind of deal going on with King Screamwing like he says.”
“Some kind of deal,” Ryan said with a thin grin. “Yeah. That about sums it up.”
“You know Bro Joe arranged to have my daddy dosed with rad dust, right? I think it was his nasty little monkey Booker set the trap. Little prick’s a lot more nimble than he looks.”
“Reckoned as much,” Ryan said. “About your daddy, I mean.”
“You did?” The captive wasn’t the only one who looked surprised. So did his companions. All except Krysty, who sat right behind the girl. She gave him a little nod.
“So mebbe you know all that about Joseph wandering in the rubble and getting some kind of spirit vision where he walked with King Screamwing’s a load of dud rounds, huh?” Emerald said. “He’s got some means of controlling them. He can call ’em, and he can keep ’em away. How, I
got no clue. But it’s true. I know it is. Screamwings’re nothing but a bunch of nasty mutie animals. Even that triple-big triple-bastard king. Although mebbe he is a bit smarter at that. Got a head on him like one of the Clydesdales they got at Breweryville.”