James Axler - Forbidden Trespass

Conn watched them for a moment. Slowly, those inside the gaudy who had jumped up at the spectacle sat themselves back down.

“I’d wait to make sure they all get headed in the right direction, just in case,” Conn said to Ryan. “Then you might want to clear out of here.”

“Much obliged,” Ryan said.

“Thank you for your help,” Krysty said. “Do you think we did it after all?”

Conn shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. Somebody did this, and that somebody needs to pay. But if I thought it was you, I never would’ve said what I did. Fact is, I don’t see how you could have done it.”

“But that big-titty girl still thinks you done it,” Yoostas Sumz said. “Sure as shit stinks double bad.”

“What do we do now?” Mildred asked.

The faces gathered around the little campfire mirrored the concern and uncertainty she felt. Except for Ryan’s. He sat off a little apart, knees drawn up, facing off to the side. His chin was down and he was clearly brooding.

Jak was nowhere to be seen. Ryan would have had to physically restrain him to keep him from prowling the perimeter of their camp to scout for signs of watchers or intruders—and look for signs the elusive white shadows had been there. Crickets and tree frogs trilled in the night. A few late fireflies danced.

“Can we stay here?” Ricky asked.

“Don’t see as how we rightly can,” J.B. said. He sat across the fire from Mildred, face turned toward the flames. The yellow underlighting brought out the strong bone structure of his face, and turned his eyeglass lenses into disks of flame.

“The place has gotten too hot for comfort, I reckon. It’s time to shake the dust of it off our heels.”

Mildred pressed her lips into a line. She hated to contradict J.B. She loved him. More, she respected him.

“Let’s not overreact.”

Mildred’s eyes widened in surprise.

She glanced at Krysty. The tall, statuesque redhead sat beside her brooding man. It was she who had spoken out as Mildred opened her mouth. Looking back at J.B., she saw a quick furrow of his brows as he glanced at Krysty.

On him, that was the equivalent of a full-on scowl. He was usually as expressive as a stone statue.

But Krysty said what she wanted, and not just because Ryan was her partner. Everyone could speak his or her mind.

“‘Overreact’?” Mildred repeated.

“We have a good place here,” Krysty said. “A comfortable camp, the cave is good shelter, and we have running water. The dig has a lot more scavvy to be unearthed. You yourself said it looks as if we’re just getting down to the good stuff, J.B.”

“Jack’s worth squat,” J.B. replied, “if you don’t live to spend it. So Trader used to say.”

Mildred frowned. J.B. did not tend toward the dogmatic, but when the quotations from his and Ryan’s old mentor were trotted out, that meant he was settling into his groove of thinking.

“He also used to point out you tend to make jack in direct proportion to the risk you run,” Ryan added without looking around.

“Why, Ryan,” Doc said. “I thought you of all people would urge caution.”

Ryan shrugged. “Looking to look at the whole situation before I make up my mind,” Ryan replied.

“Looks straightforward to me,” J.B. said. “We’ve got two packs of enemies on our tails. That’s beyond bad odds.”

“But, J.B.,” Ricky said, almost desperately. “Think of the stuff that might be down there! The tech—the weapons!”

The Armorer shook his head. He took a half-smoked black cheroot from a pocket of the brown leather jacket he wore, struck a spark from a butane lighter he had found in the last redoubt they’d jumped to and puffed the smoke to life. He cast a swift glance at Mildred.

The woman repressed a grin. His apprentice knew his soft spots, for sure.

His occasional smoking didn’t please her as a twentieth-century physician, even one who preferred research to hands-on doctoring—before she got wakened from her cryosleep into a brutal, desolate world where “healing” was her number one marketable skill, that is. But she’d long since lost the heart to chide him for it, other than a slight frown.

Realistically, she didn’t count on any of them living long enough for cancer to take them. In Deathlands, sudden death wasn’t just a constant possibility. It was an immediate reality.

“Right now,” Ryan said softly, “we’ve got no evidence I can see that anybody’s on our tails. Here, anyway.”

“But those pale shadows know where our dig site is, certainly,” Doc stated.

“Yeah. But they haven’t shown up around here, yet.”

“Yet,” J.B. echoed.

It was Ryan’s turn to shrug.

“We’re not on the last train west yet, either. Even if the locals are after us, too, they don’t know where either place is.”

Ryan had chosen a campsite a mile or so from the sinkhole that had swallowed the predark trove. It was a fine site, as comfortable as it got sleeping rough—and better than a lot of buildings they’d bunked in, Mildred knew all too well. The cave provided shelter from the frequent rains as well as from casual observation. A little stream ran along the base of the sandstone outcrop that formed their current home. And even though it was a pain humping back and forth each day to the excavation, the separation ensured that even if one location was compromised, the other wouldn’t be.

As the fact that the pale shadows had found the dig but not this place—as far as they could tell—attested to. Though with Jak on the job, she wasn’t concerned they might be under covert observation. Just because even he couldn’t track them here on their home range—whatever the hell-on-earth they were—didn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to spot them if they came creeping around here.

But now something was eating at her, too, in spite of the fact that she, like Krysty, badly wanted to stay here as long as possible. Even if this wasn’t going to be a final, permanent safe haven—unless of course they left their bones here in the Pennyrile—they were all riding the ragged edge of exhaustion. Not so much the physical sort, but the kind brought on by constant stress.

The stability they’d enjoyed for the week or so that they’d worked the sinkhole had visibly restored them all, despite the hot and arduous labor every day brought.

“If the locals think we’re murderers,” she pointed out, “how can we stay here? I mean, we need somebody to trade with.”

“We can conceivably work the excavation for a few more days,” Doc said, “until, as Ricky observes, we get to the most valuable relics. At that point we can pick the most portable and valuable items, and then head out of the area. It’s not as if we have not done that a score of times already.”

“But Conn,” Ryan said, “the man we’ve been mostly trading with, seemed triple far from convinced we had anything to do with that girl’s murder.”

“But the girl’s sister was certain we did it,” Krysty added. “And she did manage to convince some of the locals that we were guilty.”

That was another thing about Krysty. She had her druthers, same as everybody—in particular, the longing for stability—but she was wise to the bone, as well. She saw both sides to every coin, and she spoke the truth as she saw it, always.

At least to her friends. She could lie with the best of them to an enemy, as all of them could. And did.

“And Conn poured cold water on that.”

“Not Wymie,” Krysty said.

“No. She’s got her heart set against us. But Conn managed to get some doubts in other people’s minds. I don’t think we got the whole county roused against us.”