“Let me talk about it with my friend here.” Doc and Jak withdrew slightly, and conferred in whispers.
“We could use a fourth on the sledge,” Doc said. “He could help us fill it faster.”
“Not like him,” Jak said. “Has bad smell.”
“Everybody down here has a bad smell, lad. It is the stink of fear. I say we take him back to Mildred, and then have a vote. The majority will decide. How about that?”
“Still don’t like his smell.”
“KEEP BACK!” Mildred warned, brandishing her pickax. To show she meant business, she swung the tool in a short, quick arc against the rim of the cart, making the steel clang and sparks jump.
The situation wasn’t good.
In her brief time in the mines, Mildred recognized two distinct kinds of robbers. The sneaky kind, who usually worked alone. They walked past a cart and tried to filch a chunk or two of glass on the run. And the barefaced kind, who always worked in groups. They attacked without provocation in order to drive you away from your load, which allowed their accomplices to move in and help themselves.
The bearded, filthy man who taunted Mildred by spinning out of range and skipping away wasn’t the sneaky kind. He was part of a four-thief pack. His pals watched with amusement from beside their sledge along the far wall. Their cart was nearly full. A feat that had been accomplished without their leaving the cart loading area. Like a mosquito, the bearded guy kept darting back to test her reflexes. A huge mosquito, clad in foul smelling rags and strips of black plastic bag. The guy was over six foot four, and his face had been mutilated by spiral brands on his forehead and cheeks, Deathlands tattoos. A tuft of black hair sprouted from the tip of his nose.
Mildred knew she would have shot him if she had been armed. Shot him dead, just for smiling at her like that. Her temper was barely under control, her nerves fraying. She found the idea that she was going to have to use lethal force to defend 150 pounds of nuke rubble that was slowly killing her both absurd and infuriating.
She had already witnessed some pretty hairy fights over much smaller quantities of ore. The struggles had all been between men, because they made up ninety-five percent of the slave population. In the mines, the strong victimized the weak. To the four thieves, Mildred, a woman, was the easiest of easy targets. A pushover, in fact. It was only a matter of time before they made their play on her. Mildred bent and with her left hand scooped up some of the fine glass dust that collected in the corners.
She hadn’t given away the fact that she had fighting skills. All she had shown them was a few measured swipes of her ax. Demonstrating that she was willing and able to inflict bodily harm.
When they all started to move toward her at once, spreading out to close in on all sides, Mildred let her body relax. The axes they wielded had short handles, just like hers, which meant they’d have to get in close to land a blow. She had the cover of the cart, and a wall to protect her back. Those were the only strategic points in her favor, aside from the fact that the thieves were only after ore and she was trying to save her life.
The tattooed giant came at her first, waving his ax, again taunting her by offering his animalistic face as a target and then skipping out of reach. Mildred ignored him. She had to let the enemy come to her in order to save her strength. If they could wear her down physically, they would concave her skull. She held her ax in her right hand, point down, ready to block or strike.
A fat, sweaty bald guy, who outweighed her by close to one hundred pounds, closed in with a sideways shuffling gait. Like the tattooed man, his clothing consisted of a heap of tatters, fabric and plastic. The maneuver was intended to move her away from the cart, either by intimidation or brute force, so the others could plunder it. The fat man edged closer, trying to get her to take a swing at him. He was willing, it seemed, to take one for the team. With the thick coat of blubber that protected most of his body, Mildred realized that doing him sufficient damage was going to be difficult. The fat man was smiling at her, too. As if she didn’t have a chance. As if this was fun.