James Axler - Desolation Crossing

“And I get?”

“Good jack. I look after my people in other ways, too. You play straight with me, you won’t find a better boss nor baron anywhere. I figure that if I treat my people good, they won’t rip me off or run. Mind, you step out of line and I’ll chill you myself.”

J.B. said nothing for some time, just stared at the man in front of him. Trader felt like the young man was trying to stare deep into his soul, to work him out. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was promising: someone this careful was liable to screw up easily.

Finally, Dix broke his silence. “As long as there’s no more stupe tricks or tests like this one,” he said, indicating the oilcloth of blasters, “then I’m in. It’s about time I got out of this no horse shitheap.”

Trader’s face split in a broad grin. “Reckon you’re about right,” he said simply. “Welcome aboard War Wag One.”

The Present

In the moments since Eula had spoken, a silence had spread uncomfortably over the oddly clustered group. On one side stood Eula and the trader. On the other stood the six friends. J.B. was staring at the young woman. The others were dividing their attention between the Armorer and Eula, trying to fathom what ghost had just snaked from J.B.’s past, and how it would affect them.

J.B. was aware that whatever he said next would be of the utmost importance. The armored wag in the distance was linked to the trader—and probably the young woman who was the convoy armorer—by the discreet headsets they wore. Only now, up close, could he see the small stalk of clear plastic housing the mic as it sat in the trader’s beard. Eula’s was a little more obvious. No doubt they were powerful enough to be picking up every word that was said out here, so close were the two sides.

Problem was, he had never seen this young woman in his life, and had no idea who she was. The name meant nothing to him. The face, likewise. If he said as much, how pissed would these two people in front him be? And if they were, then how much would that affect the actions of the armored wag that lay some distance back? Take out these two and take scant cover, and what chance was there of surviving attack? With the mics, was there even the chance of taking that cover before being picked off?

They were outnumbered and unsure whether the supposed enemy actually was the enemy at this moment. The wrong word was all it would take to make the situation explode.

For a man whose way with words veered between minimal and clumsy most of the time, this was a no-win call. But he had to say something. The weight of expectation was upon him. That was a phrase he’d heard Doc mutter in the past, and he had never understood it until now.

“Listen,” he began haltingly, “you say you know me, but I gotta tell you, I don’t recognize your face, and you’re not that old. I mean, I spent a lot of time with these people over the past few years, and you would have been a child, and…”

He could feel the others watch the trader and the woman, could feel the tension as they waited to read body language, the tightening of their posture as they prepared to act.

The trader looked at the woman beside him. She looked, in turn, with a level gaze at J.B.

“Well?” the trader asked.

She shrugged. “He’s right. I remember him, but it was a long time ago, now. I was just a kid, and he wouldn’t have noticed me back then. Always interested in ordnance. People came second. Bet they still do. Got a point, though. Blasters don’t let you down like people do.”

Was it Mildred’s imagination, or did Eula look just a little too hard at John when she said this last? Was there an undertone there that suggested she should be watched, that she should not be trusted?

Mildred looked along at the others, a sidelong glance intended to disguise her intent. It was hard to tell if they had also picked up on this. Back in the days of her youth, they called it a poker face. Her father would denounce the effects of gambling on a Sunday, but wasn’t averse to a little poker on the Saturday night with a few friends. He always lost a little, but never gambled much. He said it was because he liked the social side of the game, and knew his face was too honest, too open. That was why to take it seriously would have meant ruin.

J.B.’s answer was important. No one knew that better than him. His words were measured, much more than he was used to. He knew that he had to pick each one as carefully as he, usually so dismissive of words, could.

“One thing you learn as you get older,” he said slowly, “is that ordnance is important because it helps people. Get careful with that, and it can turn a firefight, defend a ville—a convoy—and someone sure as shit has to obsess at times, to make sure that can happen.”

Eula, whose face had been thus far so set as to make the stony-faced friends seem open and readable, allowed a flicker of emotion to show. What it may be was hard to tell. Humor? Anger? Exasperation? Perhaps one, perhaps all. It was the briefest of muscle twitches.

“Yeah,” she said slowly, “that’s a good lesson to learn. Hope you didn’t pick it up the hard way.”

“Depends what you think is the hard way,” J.B. countered.

Eula gave the briefest of nods—everything, it seemed, was minimal to the point of almost nonexistence with her—before answering the questioning gaze of the trader.

“Yeah, I think we should ask them.”

This last was cryptic enough to cause a ripple of bemusement to spread across the group. They were wire taut, expecting to have to act in less than a blink of an eye; and now, when they would have expected resolution and action, they were to be faced with a further dilemma.

The trader let a wry grin spread across his dark, bearded face. He raised his hand to his eyes and took off his aviator shades. A small gesture, but a conciliatory one as they would now be able to read his eyes. They were small, set in folds of wrinkled fat that showed a greater age than they would have guessed, and were of a piercing, ice blue. They almost twinkled with humor as he spoke.

“It’s okay, guys. Listen, I’ve got to be straight with you, here. If we wanted to take you out, we could have done it without even breaking a sweat. We’ve got the firepower to do it, and it would have been easy to reduce that shitty little wag you were stuck with to a heap of melted junk metal. No problem. But our tech, and the intel we’ve picked up along the road, suggested that you were the people Eula here has heard of, and we need someone like you right now. So that’s why we stopped and I offered myself up like this. Sure, you could try and chill me. I figure my wag would have taken you out before your fingers had even tightened on the those triggers. Mebbe that’s a gamble, but you don’t get anywhere by playing it safe the whole time.”

Ryan let him speak. This trader was a little keen on the sound of his own voice, and a lot of what he was saying had already been said. But that was good. They’d already learned that the woman’s name was Eula. Ryan was hoping that it would ring a few more bells with J.B.’s memory. Any help they could get would be appreciated. And the trader was letting slip that he was in trouble. Someone like him would only want people like them because he was short of muscle, which meant that he’d let slip a weakness.

“So what’s your proposition?” Ryan said when the trader had left him the time and space to speak.

“Simple, really. I need replacements in my sec force. We had a little run-in with another convoy down the road apiece. It left me a little light on manpower.”

“That’s a mite careless for a man who’s telling us about how good his tech is,” Ryan posed.