“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.
Chapter Three
“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 headrest 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 hand-blasters 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.
Of course Crecca had heard about the man with the eye patch.
Every triple-stupe droolie who wasn’t deaf had heard about him.
The gaudy houses up and down Deathlands were full of stories about that particular coldheart. About how he had run with Trader in the bad, bad old days. About how he had matured into a full-blown, human chilling machine. Norms. Muties. It didn’t matter to him. Rumor had it, because of that rad-blasted single blue eye, he could only see things one way: his way. Not a man to cross, unless you were looking to book a quick ride on the last train west. More convincing than the always exaggerated whore-shack gossip, Crecca knew that even the Magus, Gert Wolfram’s steel-eyed, half-mechanical former business partner, wanted no part of him.