James Axler - Hanging Judge

Something hard hit the backs of Ricky’s lower legs. He tumbled backward over it. As he fell onto the foul-smelling, slimy dirt, the mustached sec man sidestepped with his semiauto blaster leveled.

The only thing that saved Ricky from instant death was the fact that the marshal wasn’t looking for a target on the ground. Ricky knew his reprieve wouldn’t last. He tried to get his Webley up and around in time, but there was no hope.

From just beyond where he had fallen Ricky heard two quick crashing sounds. The sec man jerked and fell. Ricky saw a dark, wet patch already appearing on the front of his tan shirt.

“What the nuke are you playing at, boy?” Ryan demanded. “You eager to find out what it’s like having dirt hit you in the eyes?”

Ricky managed to disentangle himself from the upturned wheelbarrow that had tripped him. Its wheel was missing. He scrambled to his feet.

“You told me not to chill anybody—”

“Unless it was necessary,” Ryan finished. “I’d say not getting a faceful of lead is necessary.”

“Is Jak with you?” Ricky asked as they headed toward the far end of the narrow alley.

“He rode right off into the weeds with his hands tied behind him,” Ryan said. “Forget about it. Right now we need to power out of here so we don’t wind up on the rad-blasted gallows ourselves.”

Chapter Three

“Where the nuke did you go?” Ryan demanded.

Krysty looked at Jak. The albino had stepped into the circle of yellow glow cast by their campfire in a tiny clearing in the middle of a thorn thicket tangle in the Wild as casually as if he’d just gotten back from stepping away to piss.

“Got weapons back,” Jak said. He was wearing his camouflage jacket once again. “What cooking?”

“Squirrel,” Mildred said. “What’s it look like?”

Jak shied away from the fire and the several small, skinned forms browning on spits over it.

“Squirrels not mutie?” he asked.

“Not as far as I know,” Mildred said. “I know for sure that they didn’t have two assholes each or anything like that.”

The sturdy, black, predark physician was testier than usual this night. Everyone had been on edge wondering where Jak was and whether their elaborate and risky rescue plot had been all for nothing. It didn’t help that Ryan had spent the hour since they made camp at the agreed-upon rendezvous site pacing like a tethered wolf.

Neither did it help that the night and the dense thorn-studded growth around them was alive with furtive motion, strange cries and the occasional glowing eyes.

“Answer the question,” Ryan grated.

“Did,” Jak said, sticking out his jaw mulishly. “Got stuff.”

He meant his weapons, jacket and shoes, Krysty knew. He had cached his pack in a place where the others would be sure to see the special secret marker, before haring off on his own mission and getting himself caught by the Second Chance sec men. It was waiting for him beside the others’ right now.

Ryan narrowed his eye.

“Where and how?”

Jak just glared at him.

“Jak,” Krysty said. “Why not tell him?”

“Went to rich guy’s store. Broke in, cut throat, got my stuff back. Paid bastard.”

“Nuking hell!” Ryan said. “You left us waiting here while you pursued your personal vengeance. And if he was the one who was fondling your jacket by the gallows, he’s one of the ville’s big shits. If they weren’t gunning for us before, they sure as burning nuke death are now.”

“Easy, lover,” Krysty told him. “I think we made enough of an impression on the Judge and his sec men that we need to be moving on to new territory soon, regardless.”

Ryan shook his head. “Jak, what you’ve been doing for the past few weeks, ever since Heaven Falls, has really started sticking in my craw. You always want to head out on your own. Sometimes we’ve been on the firing line because of it.”

“Restless, but look out for all,” Jak protested.

Ryan strode over to Jak and got in the smaller man’s face. “Is that what you were just doing?” he demanded, looking down on him. “Because it sure looks to me like what you were doing had nothing to do with keeping the group safe. You were making the situation worse.”

“Owed rich guy,” Jak said. “Paid.”

“Mebbe if you’d consulted with the rest of us,” J.B. offered, “we could have all come up with a plan together. We took some pretty hairy risks saving your skinny ass from that noose today.”

“Not to mention putting in a big load of work,” Mildred added.

Ricky rose to his feet.

“Guys, guys,” he said, holding up his hands. “Please, can’t we all just step back and calm down?”

Ryan and Jak turned to him and each shot out an arm tipped with an extended finger at him. “Back off,” they said as one.

Doc put a hand on Ricky’s shoulder.

“A valiant try, lad,” he said, pressing him back down. “And see? At least you have induced a moment of harmony between them.”

The two men returned to glaring at each other.

“However brief,” Doc added sadly, sitting back in his own spot.

Krysty came up behind Ryan, deliberately cracking a twig under her heel. His senses weren’t as inhumanly keen as Jak’s, but that didn’t mean they weren’t better than most people’s. As wired as he was right then, she did not want him to perceive that someone was sneaking up on him.

She placed a hand on his shoulder. He tensed as if to shake her off, but he didn’t.

“Let’s put this behind us,” she said in her most soothing voice. “Or at least put it aside. We should be safe enough here tonight, but we’re still in dangerous territory. And we’re all in this together.”

“That’s the problem,” Ryan said. “Jak’s been playing lone wolf more and more as the days go by. As if he’s too fast to run with the rest of the pack.”

He glanced back at her.

“And we’re always in dangerous territory. You know that.”

Jak’s face had been getting more and more twisted up, and his ruby eyes blazed redder the whole time Ryan spoke. Now he clenched his fists.

“You saying I not care ’bout companions?” Jak yelled.

Even Ryan took a step back at that. Mebbe not, Krysty thought, from the young albino’s spittle-spraying vehemence, as much as the fact that Jak was so violently boiling-over emotional that he’d almost spoken a complete sentence.

But Ryan wasn’t backing down. That was not what the man did.

“That’s how it looks to me,” he said, dead level. “That’s the way you’ve been acting.”

For a moment Krysty feared Jak would stab Ryan. Or try to.

Then she thought he was going to cry.

He shook himself like a wet dog. “All right.”

Jak walked over to the backpacks, picked up his and shrugged into it.

“Gone.”

He started to walk away, into the wild night.

“Wait!” Mildred jumped to her feet. “What’s gotten into you two? You can’t be serious about this.”

Jak stopped.

“I’m serious as a ground burst,” Ryan said. “I can’t speak for Jak.”

“Are you really talking about breaking up the group? Really?” Mildred pressed.

“I’m talking about doing what needs to be done to keep us alive,” Ryan said. “Same as always.”

“But—we’re, we’re like family. We look out for each other. That is what keeps us alive.”

“Jak hasn’t been looking out for us lately, in case you haven’t been paying attention. He’s been running off on his own, getting into trouble and dragging the rest of us in.”

Jak pulled his head down between his hunched shoulders, but he stayed in place as if frozen.

“He made a mistake, Ryan,” Krysty told him. “We all do that. We all have, we all will again.”