James Axler - Ice and Fire

She didn't answer, remaining preoccupied with the mark on the cloth.

J.B. took up the question. "That right, Carla? What Doc says? You mean someone gets chilled and offered to those slimy mutie bastards?"

"John!" Carla looked quickly at the closed door of the dining room with something very close to panic in her eyes.

"What?"

"Words like that will bring you all into the coils, John Dix. Ruby Rainer's one of the best informers in the ville. A breath here becomes a hurricane by the time it reaches the ears of the Motes. You must take care with your talk!"

Ryan leaned across the table, the congealing stew on his plate forgotten. "We're talking sacrifice, Carla? Is that it?"

"Edgar tries to stop it. Maybe he holds it in check. Marianne and her kin, they got the blood taste, Ryan. If the baron falls, then the ville will slide into butchery. If you could only help him. You got blasters and you look like you know how to use them. Couldn't you?.."

Ryan caught J.B.'s eyes across the table, but was unable to read them behind the blank glass of his spectacles.

"We keep telling everyone that we aren't mercenaries, Carla. Means we won't hire out. There's enough men around Deathlands who'll chill for a pocketful of jack."

"Women, too," Krysty added thoughtfully.

"Yeah. Women as well. But not us. We saw the problem — old baron weakening, generous with the ville's main wealth. The Motes, scenting power for themselves. It's not a new story, Carla. We've seen it all before. But that doesn't mean we'll get involved in it. I'm sorry."

"They'll kill him and use the bikers to shut down anyone who tries to stand up. Doesn't that matter?"

The words were aimed at Ryan, but her eyes focused on J.B., who answered her. "It matters, Carla. In Deathlands you just can't step aside for every problem, every difficulty. There's always been killing in Deathlands, since the smoke settled after dark day. Rad-blast it! We just can't help everyone."

It was an unusually strong outburst from the taciturn Armorer. His normally sallow face was flushed, and his fingers tapped nervously on the edge of the long table.

"Edgar said you wouldn't help."

"Norman Mote offered to double whatever you were paying us. Told him the truth." Ryan remembered his food and stirred it with his fork, sniffing. "Guess I'll pass on this. No, Carla. Couple of days and we'll be gone."

"A lot can happen in two days," she said, standing slowly, looking around at the seven faces. "Sorry to have interrupted the eating."

After she'd left the dining room, bumping into Ruby Rainer in the hallway, the silence lasted a long time.

The roar of the two-wheel wags told everyone in the rooming house that the Hell's Angels had come calling.

The engines were cut, and Ryan, sitting on his bed, heard a voice shouting. Krysty tugged the window open and leaned out, seeing Jak's head at the next window along. She turned back to the room and warned Ryan.

"They come for the kid," she said.

"How many?"

"Four. Not Zombie. What d'you think, lover? Gonna stop him?"

Ryan swung his legs to the floor and cat-footed across the creaking boards. He pulled the edge of the curtain back and peered out, letting one hand gently caress Krysty's nape. She eased her body against his, the dazzling crimson hair brushing over his fingers.

There was Priest, with his beard trimmed, on his Triumph twin; Ruin, wearing sunglasses with one lens missing, on a flame-streak BMW; the huge bulk of Riddler, oozing off both sides of the saddle of his enormous motorbike, which had been chopped together from a variety of different machines; and the bare-headed Dick the Hat.

"Wanna come for a run, Jak?" Ruin bellowed, staring up at the albino boy.

"Mebbe."

They saw Ryan behind the curtain. "Hey, Cawdor. Wanna come for a run?"

He wrestled with the stubborn window, finally managing to lever it upward. "Where?"

"Death Valley Road. See if we can find us some stickies."

"Don't go, Ryan. Could be a trap. Got a bad feeling about it." Krysty's fingers tightened on his hand, squeezing hard enough to make him wince in surprise.

"Sure? I can't see those double-stupe rednecks ever getting a stickie."

"How about the stickies getting themselves some double-stupe rednecks, Ryan?"

"Got a point. I'll go along with Jak. Kind of keep an eye on things."

Krysty smiled and kissed him on the cheek. "Since you've only got one eye, lover, that's about all you can keep on him."

"You coming?" Dick the Hat shouted.

"Can go?" Jak called eagerly to Ryan.

"Sure," the one-eyed man replied. "Bring your blaster."

Jak rode pillion behind Ruin on the big BMW bike. Ryan clung on to the rear seat of the Triumph, balancing to the bends and bumps in the road, seeing ahead over Priest's shoulders. The light blue ribbons in the long, greasy hair fluttered in the wind of their passing.

Ryan hadn't ridden on a two-wheel wag for years, but the breathtaking rush of exhilaration came speeding back. His own hair was ruffled, and he could feel the warm desert air plucking at the patch covering his left eye. He'd left the caseless G-12 checked at the Rentaroom, contenting himself with his handgun and the long steel panga.

"You ever seen?" Priest shouted, his words almost whipped away by their speed.

Ryan leaned forward to reply, suddenly catching the stench of the rider's stained blue denims. "Seen a few," he said.

"We never catch 'em. I seen some, in the distance like. But they all fucked off when they heard us coming. Got no balls for a mix with the Last Heroes."

"They giving you trouble?"

Priest didn't reply immediately, concentrating on swerving the heavy chopper around a massive hole in the road. It looked like a landie had gone off, by the size of the crater.

"Yeah," he finally grunted. "You know we got a lotta gas. Ground's full of it out near where we have our base. By the old park. But there's some outlying wells. That's where we're going now, the one toward Death Valley."

The knowledge that none of his companions had ever actually faced gave Ryan pause for thought. Of all the muties that roamed the Deathlands, stickies were among the worst — ferocious and inexorable in their desire to attack normies. He wished that he could have warned Jak about what they might be riding into. But the noise of the hogs and the speed at which they were traveling made that impossible. A glance at the speedo told Ryan they were racing along the shifting surface of the old highway at something close to seventy miles an hour, which was about as fast as he'd ever been. Because of the poor quality of processed gas, few wags could manage much more than forty. A tuned-up war wag with all its armor was lucky to reach fifty.

Jak was leaning perilously on the BMW, hands locked in the small of his back, his keen-edged reflexes allowing him to roll with every movement of the powerful two-wheeler. His long hair blew behind him like a streamlined helmet of purest white and his eyes, as he turned to grin across at Ryan, flamed like living embers.

The boy gave a piercing banshee scream of unbridled pleasure, punching the air with his right fist, making the rider wobble and yell a curse over his shoulder at the teenager.

The land was a monotonous reddish orange, with occasional relieving areas of gray or pale yellow. The road unrolled itself, mainly straight, with an occasional dip and swoop. On one side the ruins of an old post-and-wire fence leaned drunkenly toward the distant hills. They saw no signs of life. Twice they passed abandoned drilling rigs, twisted and rusting.

"Any snakes around here?" Ryan shouted.

"Not this way. All in the brush between the ville and the mountains. Nobody goes far that way. Azrael and his brothers and sisters see to that."