Ryan had noticed a small plaque on the outside wall, telling the world that “The Adeiphi Cinema was opened officially on September 24, 1989, by Senator John J. McLaglen.”
It was a squat, rectangular building, with a faintly Spanish or Moorish look to it. Pale fawn stucco had weathered down to near white. A marquee awning, with vertical slit windows above it, had once held news of forthcoming attractions. On one side Ryan had seen a glass cubicle where he guessed tickets and food and cigarettes had once been sold. A peeling, faded notice warned, ‘”The Surgeon General has determined that the more you smoke, the faster you die.”
There were around thirty of the gang around the building. Ryan had been impressed with Jak’s grasp of military security. They had been escorted back from the Holiday Inn, with guards ranged on either side of them, covering a couple of blocks in each direction. They carried a bewildering range of battered blasters, most of them either handguns or old hunting rifles that had their origins in Spain or Czechoslovakia. Pistols came in all shapes and sizes, virtually all showing signs of having been welded or having the bore enlarged. In the first couple of minutes Ryan spotted Colts, Pumas, Pythons, Brownings, Enfields, Webleys and Smith amp; Wessons, with a few Russian Stechkins and Makarovs. Predictably, because of the comparative ease of making ammo, there were some very old Colt Navys and Walkers.
Lauren’s renegade unit was comprised mainly of men and a lesser number of women, between the ages of fifteen and thirty, with some of them older. They all looked scruffy, in patched clothes. And all of them looked as though they never quite got enough to eat.
The one characteristic that they shared, and that set them apart from most of the population of Deathlands those that weren’t muties, that iswas an alertness, a hair-trigger readiness; jumpy and sharp, their eyes were constantly on the watch. They were a bunch of ordinary people doing the best they could. Ryan thought then about what Jak had told them about his hopes and plans, and once again felt how much he wanted to help the snow-haired lad. Bat still at the core of his heart was Krysty Wroth. As he followed the slight boy through the swing doors into the auditorium, he was already calculating. How many men? Day or night? Frontal raid or try to sneak in? Whatever happened, there were men and women in the old cinema who would be dead within twenty-four hours. You didn’t slice through someone’s carotid artery without some of their blood splashing all over you.
“Quiet!” yelled Lauren, holding up a hand for silence. “These them. Got good guns. Help, we help ’em get women away baron. This is big one, friends. We hit hard and mebbe win forever.”
There were about a dozen of what Ryan figured were the top hands in the outfit. All had the killer look around the eyes and mouth. It was immediately obvious that they didn’t much care for having four strangers suddenly in their midst.
“Why the fuck we need ’em, Jak?” asked a tall woman whose lower jaw was disfigured with a livid scar zagging across her neck.
“You don’t need us, lady,” replied Ryan. “Way I see it, if you keep alive and Tourment doesn’t get no stronger, in about fifty years you might be able to put a real fucking fright up him.”
There was a general relaxing of tension, and some of them laughed openly. The woman spat on the floor and turned away in obvious disgust.
“I don’t like a bad winner, lady, but I sure hate a fucking sore loser,” added Ryan, pushing it deliberately, knowing that this wasn’t a place to back off even an inch.
“Let it lay, Zee,” snapped Jak. “We voted and they’re in.”
“These women he got mean a lot to you, brother?” asked the woman, still not beaten.
“Do muties shit in their pants?” he replied, getting a bigger laugh and even a grudging half smile from Zee.
Jak shook his head. “That’s enough. There’s some serious talk to go down. We know his place. Even got plans from city files. What we didn’t have was blasters and mercies. Now we got ’em.”