James Axler - Perdition Valley

Even if the guard hadn’t, Ryan decided. There was dried blood on the sec man’s clothing, but none of it was his, and his face lacked the hard expression of a person who had taken the life of another. There was determination, and even bravery, but not the slightest sign of combat experience. For all Ryan knew, this was the teenager’s first shift of standing guard at the ville gate.

“Now, look, friend…” Ryan began impatiently.

“I said, keep moving!” the teenager ordered, grimly leveling the deadly blaster. “We don’t want your kind around here!”

“And what kind is that?” Ryan asked gruffly, leaning over slightly in his saddle to pat the neck of his horse.

The sweaty chestnut stallion nickered at the touch and shuffled its unshod hooves in the dry sand. Heavy saddlebags were draped across the muscular animal’s withers, and on its flanks was the brand of Two-Son ville, a lightning bolt set inside a circle. Even though covered with dust from the long ride, Ryan was well-dressed, wore good boots, pants without any patches and a heavy coat trimmed with fur. A shiny longblaster was hung across his shoulders and a slim handblaster rested in the holster of a predark gunbelt. A bandolier of ammo clips crossed his chest, and at his side was a large knife of unknown design.

Licking dry lips, the guard gave no reply. But he kept stealing glances at the left side of Ryan’s face.

Touching his leather eye patch, Ryan grunted in understanding. Yeah, he thought so.

It had been a week since the companions had left Two-Son ville in the south and charged across the Zone, going from ville to ville, chasing down the rumors of the chillings of one-eyed men. But they were always one day behind the ruthless coldhearts who jacked everybody with silver hair like Doc’s, and chilled any man with only one eye like Ryan’s. Left or right eye, it made no dif.

It had been three long days of finding nothing but death and dust, until now. So Ryan as sure as nuking hell wasn’t going to be turned away from a ville where the chillings were so fresh that a green sec man still had dried blood on his clothing.

“Move along, rist,” the guard said, tightening his grip on the scattergun. Behind the teen, two small hatches in the thick wooden gate swung open and dark metal glistened in the dim torchlight.

In spite of the poor lighting, Ryan caught the subtle motion with his good eye and shifted his position to get a clear shot with his handblaster at whoever was standing at the hatch. If trouble came, it would be from the snipes hiding behind the gate, and not this nervous kid.

“And how do you know we’re not the ones doing all of the chilling?” J. B. Dix asked, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses.

Sitting astride a chestnut stallion, the short, wiry man was dressed in loose denim blue jeans, a T-shirt and a heavy leather jacket. A pump-action scattergun was strapped across his back, a 9 mm Uzi rapidfire rested on his thigh and at his side hung a large canvas bag bulging with lumpy objects.

“W-we don’t want no more trouble,” the teenager stated roughly, stepping away from the gate to give a clearer field of fire for the folks at the blaster hatches. “So just git. And I m-mean now!”

This boy was terrified, Krysty Wroth realized. But not of us.

“Go fetch your sec chief,” the redhead demanded, her long hair moving gently around her shoulders as if stirred by secret winds.

There was a bloody bandage on her left cheek and another on her wrist from the recent fighting down in Two-Son. The woman was riding a roan-colored mare. A bearskin coat hung across the saddlebags. A predark MP-5 rapidfire was draped across the pommel of the saddle, and a weird-looking wheelgun rode in a leather holster at her shapely hip. The cowboy boots in the stirrups were decorated with the silver embroidery of falcons, and the toes were steel, although at the present the metal was caked with gray dust.

The guard frowned at the sight. The redhead was better armed than any sec man. The loops of her gunbelt were filled with live brass, more than the teen had seen in his entire life.

“Ain’t got a chief. He’s…” The teen shut his mouth tightly and hunched his shoulders.

“He was one of the people killed—excuse me—chilled, by the strangers,” Doc Tanner rumbled. “Thank you, that explains everything.”

Dressed as if from another century, Doc was in frilly white shirt, with a frock coat that spread behind him across the horse like an opera cape. A mixed pair of big-bore handblasters rode in a gunbelt made of closed ammo pouches, and an ebony walking stick with a silver lion’s-head handle jutted from his backpack like a tribal totem.

“By the Three Kennedys, sir,” Doc said, turning to address Ryan, “we must be hot on the trail of the coldhearts if the locals haven’t even replaced their sec chief yet!”

“That’s an ace on the line,” Ryan drawled, rubbing his unshaven chin. Surreptitiously, he shifted the reins from his left hand to his right. The one-eyed man was naturally right-handed, but he’d been hurt in a fight a short while ago and his shooting arm wasn’t completely healed yet.

Just then, the blaster hatches closed and there came the sound of heavy bolts being slid aside. With creaking hinges, the thick gate was pushed open and five armed sec men walked out of the ville, the ground crunching under their boots. As the portal closed again, Ryan and the others saw a dozen more men inside the ville, positioned behind a sandbag wall, working the bolts on longblasters and notching arrows into homie crossbows. These people were ready for a war.

“Guess I’m the new chief sec man,” the oldest man stated gruffly, hitching up a gunbelt. He was dressed in ragged clothing, his predark motorcycle boots patched with duct tape, but his blasters shone with fresh oil. “And yeah, Baron Harrison was aced, along with Chief Rajavur.”

“You guess?” Mildred Wyeth asked, brushing a plait of beaded hair back off her dusty face. Riding an appaloosa mare, the physician was armed with an MP-5 rapidfire and a wheelgun rested in her belt. At her side hung a predark canvas bag.

Touching a freshly stitched scar on his chest, the sec chief shrugged. “Ain’t nobody alive to tell me no,” he stated honestly.

“Who aced baron?” Jak Lauren asked, leaning forward in his saddle. The palomino mare under the albino teen obediently altered her stance to accommodate his new position, and snorted softly with impatience.

The albino teenager riding the beast had a huge handblaster in his gunbelt and an MP-5 rapidfire in the longblaster holster set alongside the saddle.

The chief sec man shrugged. “Damned if we know who aced him.”

“Where are the bodies, then?” Ryan demanded, glancing up at the clouds overhead. He carefully noted that none of the stars was being eclipsed by anybody walking along the top of the wall around the ville. Good. The locals weren’t friendly, but neither were they trying to jack the companions.

“Hell’s bells, just follow the birds, you can’t miss them,” a sec man growled. A couple the armed men standing behind him nodded in agreement.

“Nuking hell, it was awful, like something from a nightmare!” the young guard muttered, shaking his head as if trying to dislodge the memories of the sight.

“Shut up,” the sec chief barked at the lad. Then he turned to face the companions. “All right, rist, you asked some questions and got some answers. Normally, we’re always interested in trading, even better is getting news from across the Zone, but not tonight. Now get moving, or we start blasting.”

In the flickering light of the torches, Ryan saw more blaster hatches swing open, and realized the new sec chief meant every word. There was nothing more to learn here. The answers they sought were back in the desert. Follow the birds, eh?