“‘Aye, that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain,’ ” Doc rumbled, pretending to lean heavily on his swordstick as if he were old and weak.
” Hamlet , act 1, scene 5,” said Mildred, stepping around a deep pothole in the rough surface. The summer rains must be very fierce in this area. “You ever saw the Mel Gibson version?”
Doc shook his head. “Indeed, no, madam, the name is unfamiliar to me. But then, the few motion pictures that I have seen were on laser discs and videos in the archives of the redoubts. Movies were a bit after my time.”
“Yeah, well, he blew the Kenneth Branagh version to hell and back.”
“These people, they fought over a movie?” Dean asked, trying to follow the adult conversion. He knew that both Mildred and Doc were born before skydark, and he often had a trip-hard time following their conversations.
“Fight? In a way,” the physician mused.
“And Gibson won?”
She smiled. “Kicked the living shit out of Branagh.”
Shifting the position of the Browning in his belt, the boy made no comment. Old fights by dead sec men held no interest for him.
Accepting the rebuff, Mildred shrugged to adjust her heavy medical bag. Or rather, what she called her medical bag since it held no proper surgical toolsjust boiled cloth and strong string, leather strips to use as a tourniquet, a small sharp knife, a few herbs and moss she knew helped ease itching and minor infections, some plastic-wrapped tampons reserved strictly for deep bullet wounds, a plastic bottle of alcohol, a bag of sulfur and one small tin of aspirins. Not much, hardly anything, but it was a start. Before she went into cryo-sleep and awoke in the next century, Mildred had been a highly trained physician. But without tools and chems, there was little the doctor could do but offer a smile to the dying.
The road rose in a gentle swell, bringing the wall and gate of the nameless ville into view. A gurgling creek flowed alongside the road, leading toward the huge, gaping crater of the stone quarry. To their left was a ragged pile of busted shale rising a hundred feet tall. It was no more than a molehill, really, compared to the Shen Mountains cresting over the western horizon.
The gentle wind was pushing the corpses hanging from the gallows to and fro like a clock pendulum, the flock of crows taking flight and landing again as they tried to feed on the dead humans without interruption. A sudden flurry of movement at the gate caught Ryan’s eye, and he noted the guards stuff loaves of steaming black bread into the pockets of their coats and frantically ready their blasters.
The companions paused for a while until the guards at the gate were prepared for visitors, then proceeded at a slow pace, watching the bushes for snipers or traps. “Remington .22 hunting rifle on the left,” J.B. said softly, fingering the HE grenade in the pocket of his leather jacket. “Slow, jams a lot and not very accurate.”
“The other looks military,” Dean commented, hands in his pockets, his fingers tight on the grip of his blaster. “It is,” replied his father, easing the safety off his longblaster. “That’s a BAR, Browning Auto Rifle, .30 long and one of the best blasters around. We’re already in range, so stay sharp.”
“Wonder if they are thinking the same as us,” Krysty muttered as they started forward again.
“Smiling villains?” Jak asked with a scowl. “Yeah.”
“Damn well should be,” Doc stated, clicking back the hammer of his monstrous LeMat pistol. “Unless they are total fools.”
As the companions came abreast of a busted stone lintel lying on the berm, the big guard with a beard called out to them.
“That’s close enough, outlanders.” Oddly, the man’s eyebrows and the hair under his hat were burnished crimson, like polished copper, but his beard was jet-black. “What do you want?”
Ryan noticed that the second guard was a good distance away from the first, and stationed behind a water barrel for additional protection. Smart. These men knew their jobs, even if they were poor shots. There were only faint traces of blood on the ground, a few insects scurrying to quickly harvest the nutrient-rich soil before it dried.