“Nine,” said the marker.
Eight to tie from the last two shots, and nine to win it.
Everyone’s attention was focused on the minuscule square of white card. Ignoring the excitement, a tiny copper-winged scarab moth had landed on a branch just above the mark, its poisonous tendrils tasting the air.
Mildred aimed and fired.
“Miss,” brayed the man with the scope too eagerly. “Yeah, a miss.”
“I want…” Ryan began, stopping at the collective sigh of wonder as the venomous little insect fluttered lifelessly to lie pulped on the ground below.
Mildred fired her last shot without even seeming to sight, instantly starting to reload her blaster, not paying any attention to the marker’s call.
“How many?” Wolfe yelled. “Did she miss the target again? Did she?”
“Ten,” Mildred said very quietly.
“Ten,” the skinny man echoed. “She scored a ten with her last shot. Woman wins.”
Caitlin spun on his heel and stalked off, ignoring Mildred’s outstretched hand.
Wolfe raised his voice above the hubbub. “Outlander wins the first part of the testing. No quarrels with that. Finest shooting I ever saw. Now we move on to the second part. Not over yet.” He turned to Ryan. “I say that it’s not over yet.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jak was next for the testing.
He and Ryan had discussed what weapon the albino teenager should choose. The youth’s first instinct was to go for his beloved throwing knives. Ryan had seen him in action with them often enough to know that nobody in Deathlands could touch his uncanny skill.
“But they don’t know you got them, Jak. Still got any of the knives?”
“What?”
“They got all our weapons off us. But you said you still got two or three blades concealed, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“So? Best to keep them hidden, don’t you reckon? We don’t have many surprises going for us on our side.”
“Could ask for one blade they took.”
“Yeah.” Ryan considered that possibility. “But how about if you choose hand-to-hand?”
Jak’s red eyes glinted at the idea. “Like it, Ryan. Show them fucking testing.”
“Then that’s decided.”
THE CHOICE THREW Wolfe and the senior members of the religious community.
“Not proper testing,” Jim Owsley complained in his customary whining voice.
“Don’t see why not,” Josiah Steele argued. “It’s a genuine skill.”
Wolfe nodded his reluctant agreement. “Guess that’s so, Brother.”
Caitlin had rejoined the group. “Probably some sort of trick. Like that bitch with her freaky-deaky blaster! A cheat.”
One of the older men laughed out loud. “Not sure that bein’ a better shot is cheatin’, Brother Caitlin. Not by any of the Lord Jesus’s definitions. I vote we let the kid try his hand at close combat.”
There was a general agreement.
But a fresh problem sprang up as soon as they tried to select who their champion would be in the testing against Jak.
Ryan and the others watched as a bitter argument developed among the Children of the Rock. It came down quickly to a straight choice between a pair of siblings—Bull Burrows and his almost identical brother, Lee.
Both were big men, weighing in, Ryan guessed, close to three hundred pounds, with hands like platters of raw ham. Both had lost all of their teeth, with bleeding gums, probably owing to the rad sickness. Both were in their middle twenties, close to six and a half feet tall, with long, greasy hair that was flaking away from their narrow skulls in places. “I can lick my little brother, Lee, blindfolded,” Bull Burrows protested.
“That’ll be the day, pilgrim,” mocked the younger of the pair. “Not, not, not!”
“Make them tussle to pick a winner to lick the whitey kid,” someone shouted.
“Let the outlander pick which one he wants to whale the tar out of him!” was another suggestion, which seemed to be greeted with general approval.
“Sounds fair,” Joshua Wolfe said, turning toward the silent, watching youth. “How do you feel about making the choice yourself, sonny boy?”
“Both,” Jak said flatly, the single word lying there like a shovelful of graveyard dirt.
“Both?” Wolfe repeated, shaking his head as though he’d misheard. “You say that you’ll take both the Burrows boys on? One after the other?”