James Axler - Damnation Road Show

Even as they began to move, the hairy guy snarled, “You’re begging for a major ass-kicking, Snowball.” He looked around to make sure he had backup, then added, “And by skydark you’re gonna get it!”

Before the hairy roustabout and his pals could take a step forward, the albino’s right hand was up and full of .357 Magnum Colt Python. He showed them all the dark hole in the crowned muzzle, the hole where death slept, until called.

Jak spoke again. This time it wasn’t a polite request; it was a threat. “Open cage now….”

Ryan lunged and used his momentum to throw a shoulder into the hairy man from behind. The blind-siding impact sent the roustabout stumbling to his knees, hard. He cursed as he immediately jumped back to his feet. He was very nimble for a big man.

In the next instant, weapons were out all around.

The carny folk waved nine mill semiauto blasters, mostly KG-99s and Llamas. Blue-steel, high-capacity cheapies, in excellent condition.

Ryan held his scoped Steyr SSG-70 rifle at waist height. Krysty had her Model 640 Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver in a double grip. Dean likewise braced his Hi-Power. Mildred one-handed her .38, a Czech-built, ZKR 551 target pistol. J.B. balanced his 12-gauge Smith & Wesson M-4000 pumpgun against his hip. Seeing the deadly turn of events, the ville gawkers turned and ran, scattering for the cover of the plant beds like so many jackrabbits.

The tense moment stretched on and on.

No one on either side wanted the shooting to start. They were standing way too close to each other to miss. Once the blasting began, there weren’t going to be any survivors.

Nobody moved.

Nobody even blinked.

Then, from over by the circle of wags, someone shouted, “What in the rad-fucking-blazes is going on here?” A tall man in a red tailcoat stormed out of the side door of the biggest wag. At his side was a naked, three-foot-tall, immature stickie.

The tailcoated man and his little shadow slowed their charge as they approached the fracas.

With his KG-99’s sights locked on Ryan’s chest, the hairy roustabout explained the deadly stalemate. “Snowball there,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, “wants us to let the nukin’ lion out. Started waving his blaster in our faces.”

As if it understood what the albino was trying to do, the mountain lion reached a huge paw between the bars and placed it lightly on his slim but powerful shoulder.

“Not gonna happen, son,” the red-haired, red-goateed carny master told Jak. “That’s one smart cat. The smartest, meanest, damnedest mountain cat in all of Deathlands. He’s playing you for a triple stupe. Open that cage door and he’ll gut you from windpipe to goobers with one swipe of that big old friendly paw of his. Then he’ll carve up the rest of us, just for fun, before we can do jack shit about it. Same way he chilled three of my best handlers over the past two months. One second they were alive, and the next they were torn clean in half—legs here, the rest of them way the fuck over yonder.” To illustrate, he gestured over his shoulder with a hooked thumb.

Ryan sidestepped over to Jak and whispered in his ear, “It’s not the time for this fight…we got other business first.”

The albino youth didn’t give a flying fuck for the wishes of most other human beings, but he always paid close attention to Ryan Cawdor, whose battle smarts had never proved wrong, and whose courage never failed.

Ryan stared hard into the bloodred eyes and nodded, to underscore his point.

Jak smiled, then swung the ventrib sights of the Python across the chests of his adversaries, counting and marking targets, left to right. Prep for a rapid-fire, cylinder-emptying fusillade.

A visible shudder passed through the pack of roustabouts.

Having made his point, Jak holstered his blaster.

After a pause, all weapons were lowered.

“You ain’t Gert Wolfram,” J.B. said to the man in the tailcoat.

The baby stickie started making kissing sounds at the Armorer, who shifted and planted his back foot, bracing himself to swing up the shotgun and take the sucker-fisted squirt’s spongy little head off at the neck.

“What makes you say that?” asked the carny master.

“Gert Wolfram is fat, fifty and fucked,” J.B. replied. “Last time we saw him, he had two broken ankles and his stickie slaves were pulling him apart like a sweet dough pudding.”

“Even if Wolfram survived the appetites of his pets,” Mildred added, “he couldn’t have lost twenty years in age, two hundred pounds in weight and gained six inches in height.”

“You got me there,” said the red-haired man with a disarming grin. “Actually I never claimed to be old Wolfram. People just assume that it’s so. Sure doesn’t hurt the business to let them keeping thinking that. I’m committed to keeping the show’s original fine reputation. I’m called the Magnificent Crecca, for obvious reasons.” He reached down to adjust the soft but prominent bulge in the front of his white pants. Then he leered at Krysty.

“Do we call you Magnificent, or just Crecca?” she asked.

“I answer to either, or to M.C., or carny master, or in your case—” he leaned closer to her to add “—to lover man.”

Krysty’s prehensile hair reacted to the unwanted advance, drawing up into tight coils.

Crecca’s eyes widened when he saw this. “My, my,” he said, “aren’t you the special one?” He pulled at his chin beard, looked her up and down salaciously, then said, “Wonder what else you’ve got hidden away for me?”

Krysty put her hand on the butt of her wheelgun. “I’ve got six hollowpoints, all for you,” she said, staring him down.

For a second Ryan thought things were going to escalate out of control again, but Crecca just looked amused. “I hope you’re all going to be here tomorrow so you can see the carny show,” he said. “You’ll never forget it. I promise you that.”

Neither will you, lover man, Ryan thought. Neither will you.

“Ain’t you never heard about the man with the black eye patch?”

From the luxury and comfort of an executive office chair bolted to the sheet metal floor—the rips in the brown leatherette on the arms, seat, and head-rest repaired with overlapping strips of frayed duct tape—the Magnificent Crecca gestured impatiently for the big man breathing wolf-nasty in his face to take a step back. Something more easily ordered than obeyed.

Floor space in the carny master’s cabin in the big wag was at a premium, largely because its side walls were lined with built-in, sway-proof racks and shelves. Jammed on these shelves were select items taken either in trade for performances, or looted after a mass chilling and burial. Among the more important trinkets were unfired, Brazilian-made handblasters still wrapped in their protective Cosmoline; several .223-caliber, full-auto, military carbines; a scoped Remington 700 longblaster; and factory-loaded ammo in their original metal boxes. There were tall bottles of the very best joy juice and plastic bags of uncut jolt. There were lidded glass jars packed with bright bits of jewelry and dozens of cardboard boxes full of single-serving-sized containers of predark candies. There was also a barely functioning mini-TV and VCR, a small number of video-and audio-tapes and a black boom box. The electricity to power the carny master’s home entertainment center came from movable solar panels on the wag’s roof.

Along the front wall, below the room’s only decoration, a quartet of flyspotted, discolored, girly magazine centerfolds, was Crecca’s narrow bunk. Jackson lay curled up in the corner in a nest of rags. A pale, sleeping pillbug. His choke collar was chained to an eyebolt in the wall. The cabin smelled strongly of unwashed male, cigar butts and paper-trained stickie.