James Axler - Ice and Fire

"But I don't..." she began, stopping herself when she saw the look of flaring anger on Ryan's face.

They went in the usual pairings: Lori with Doc, the sunnier side of her nature reappearing; J.B. and Jak wandering off together, intent on a recce of the gas-processing plant. And Ryan with Krysty.

"Snakefish," she said. "Prettiest little ville in the west."

It was just like walking into one of the small towns that Ryan had seen in old mags and vids. The lack of nuke damage was staggering. The sidewalk was clean, the shop fronts mostly looked like they had been painted fresh in the last month or so.

Uniquely there were several wags parked along the side of the street. Four pickups, one ordinary passenger vehicle, a blue VW and a panel van with a badly painted picture of a leaping salmon on its side.

"That's what living on top of your own gas supply does for you," Ryan said. "That's why they all look so damned jack-heavy. Everyone wants gas. You got it and you name your own price in the trading stakes. Good place to be."

They browsed along the sidewalk, staring in at the windows of the stores, amazed at the variety and quality of the various goods offered.

There weren't too many folks out and about — mainly women, with a few younger children. Everyone was polite and friendly in a distant, formal kind of way.

There was a sign in one window that read: Snakefish jack, one dollar to one dollar. Outsiders' jack, one-fifty to one Snakefish. Trade by agreement. Sorry, no credit. Don't even ask.

"Shows you how solid things are here," Ryan observed. "Two local dollars to three from outside the ville. Good trade rate."

Occasionally, if you found some isolated community that the nukes hadn't reached, you might find faded signs from before the big fires. In Snakefish it was different. The buildings were untouched, but everything they sold was new.

Practically everything. One establishment was retailing blasters. And most of those were rebuilds and recons from before sky-dark, like the handguns carried by the Angels.

The shop owner was a sharp-faced young man, and he came out to his doorway when he spotted them looking in his window.

"Hi there. You admiring the display? Some real good blasters there, huh?"

"No," Ryan replied, seeing no reason to lie about it.

"What? How d'you..."

"Cheap shit. Recons look like they'd blow your hand off first time you squeezed the trigger."

"I'll have you know that I engineered them myself and I..."

Ryan cut through the bluster. "Then you ought to try one out. Put the muzzle in your mouth and let the hammer down."

Krysty's fingers on his arm told Ryan that she thought he was going too far.

"They aren't that bad! Anyway, what are you carrying, stranger?"

Without speaking, Ryan unholstered the 9mm SIG-Sauer P-226 and showed it to the dealer.

"Hollow tooth! That's one... I could do you a real good trade on that, friend."

"I'm not trading, and I'm not your friend," Ryan replied.

"Two hundred Snakefish jack," the gun dealer offered eagerly.

"No."

"Three hundred?"

Ryan shook his head. "Not selling."

"Four hundred and any blaster out of my stock, and that's my last and best offer."

"I told you..."

"Let me see it?" He held out his hand. "I'll give you a great deal, or my name's not Honest John Dern. Gimme."

"Two people get to hold this blaster," Ryan said coldly. "Me, and the man that chills me. Nobody else. Right?"

"Right. Sure. If you change your mind..."

Krysty was laughing as they walked on. "Can't blame the stupe for trying, lover."

The wind had veered, and the smell of gasoline had weakened considerably. Ryan and Krysty quickly noticed that nearly every store and house in the small township seemed to carry some kind of a snake emblem in a window. Sometimes it was ornately carved from a twisted piece of wood, sometimes a more symbolic shape of plaited string or wool. Most of the totem figures carried a silver collar around the throat.

Apart from the town hall, the largest and most elegant building in the ville was at the farther end of the street. Through a coat of fresh paint it was still possible to make out the name: Rex Cinema and Video Palace. But it was put into the shade by the blaring and colorful lettering across the front.

Come One. Come All. Worship at the Shrine of the Blessed Serpents of the Apocalyptic Gospel of the Martyred Marcus the Peripatetic.

Beneath it was a sheet of card, under clear perspex, which listed the days and times of the services. There was one due the following morning at seven o'clock.

"Early bird gets the snake," Krysty observed.

"Unless it's the one we got first. Baron seemed to think we should go."

"Then we should," she agreed.

The last notice was on a wooden board, screwed to the front wall of the building: Guardians of the Sepulcher of the Sacred Snakes. Norman Mote. Marianne Mote. Apostolic Apprentice, Joshua Mote.

Beyond the old movie house the ville ended. The road just faded out into the semidesert, vanishing into a deeply rutted dirt trail.

They turned and looked behind them, from Main Street to the desert beginning, just past the elegant town hall. Snakefish wasn't more than a couple of straggling blocks wide.

"No gaudies?" Krysty said questioningly. "No drinkers, either?"

"Nope. Not like Mocsin, or some of the real heavy frontier pest holes. This is all clean and decent."

"Yeah. And they worship snakes, lover. Don't forget that."

Doc and Lori were just coming out of a clothes shop as Ryan and Krysty walked past them. The store was called Handmaid and featured a marvelous patchwork quilt in the window, made of hundreds of tiny pieces of colored satins and silks.

"Spend any of your Snakefish jack, Lori?" Krysty asked.

"Nice skirt in there, but old miserable Doc said it cost too many."

"It was beautiful," Doc admitted ruefully. "Segments of lace, some old and some new, all stitched together, and it was kind of transparent. I fear that it cost more jack than we got in total and I decided that the garment would have lasted about zero seconds in the brush."

"Wouldn't have worn it out in sand, would I?" she pouted. "It was so pretty, Doc. I don't wear anything pretty now."

"One day, my dearest and most cuddlesome little dear one."

"Dear one, dear one, dear one," she mimicked, half-angry. "When's that?"

"Tomorrow. Always tomorrow. But one day, I promise you, Lori, it will be tomorrow. I shall allow you to make an honest man out of me."

She flounced away from him, head in the air, leaving Doc with Ryan and Krysty.

"Should tan her ass, Doc," Ryan suggested.

Doc sniffed. "She's just seventeen, if you know what I mean, and the way that... I'm sure that used to be a song, once. Or I'm a poet and I don't know it. No, the girl's growing up and she's growing away. You can't cage the wind, Krysty. And I would never try."

"Want to walk back to the rooming house, Doc?"

"Thank you, Ryan. Good friends are a consolation against the grievous rigors of this parlous world. And I do appreciate your great kindness toward me. But I must walk that lonesome highway by myself."

"Keep away from the snakes!" Krysty shouted as the old man wandered slowly away.

One place that fascinated Ryan was a store selling memorabilia. Predark was its name. The window was dusty and the interior badly lit, despite the ville's electrical power, all of it provided by a huge gas-fired generator on the edge of town.

"Let's go in."

There was a brass bell above the door, and it tinkled like Lori's spurs as they pushed it open. It was a warm day, with dark chem clouds stippling the tops of the Sierras. Inside the store it was humid and quiet, the silence broken only by the ticking of a tall grandfather clock in the corner.