“Big fire for dawn,” the sec man said.
“You aren’t roasting an ox in there, are you?” the smaller man asked. “Or some other animal, perhaps?”
Ryan’s fingers itched for the butt of the SIG-Sauer, but he maintained a poker face. “We just rose early, ready to make a good start on the road. We still feel chilled from the ducking in the Lantic.”
“What was the name of your ship?” the puny-looking man snapped, pointing at Ryan with his stick.
“It was” To his horror, Ryan found that his mind had gone completely blank. He’d been so preoccupied with the problem of the burning corpse that he wasn’t ready for that question.
” Pequod ,” Doc Tanner said quickly.
The man nodded. “A good name. A good New England name, though ill-fated in history.”
Ryan noticed that Krysty’s eyes had been caught by something in the fire, though she had quickly looked away. He followed where she’d been staring.
The flames were so fierce that they’d already burned through most of the dry wood that bad been piled on. One arm of the dead man had flopped out of the side, clearly visible. Each blistered finger carried a tiny flame, like corpse candles. The skin had peeled away, revealing the structure of the muscles and tendons beneath, blackened and charred.
Trader had quickly risen and brushed past Ryan, putting himself between the macabre spectacle and the two newcomers. He threw another handful of branches on the fire, covering the offending limb. “Best keep it going,” be said with a knockdown, friendly smile.
“Where do you come from?” Krysty asked.
The smaller man turned and saw her for the first time, gaping at her dazzling hair. “Who Where I mean, I shouldn’t have stared like that but Where do we come from? Oh, not too far away.” He recovered his self-possession. “Perhaps you would all like to come and be our guests for a while. Outlanders are very few and far between around Acadia.”
“Keep it that way,” his armed companion muttered.
“Yes, yes, I know. But there are good reasons why we But that is none of your business.” He pasted a smile in place. “My name is Buford. Professor Ladrow Buford.”
“Professor!” Doc exclaimed. “You mean you’re some kind of rad-blasted whitecoat scientist?”
“Of a sort, old man, yes. But we can talk so much more about this when you come to the institute.”
“Institute!” It was Mildred’s turn. “What kind of place in Deathlands gets to be called an institute?”
Buford tapped his stick in the dirt. “Too many impertinent questions! I will not” He stopped abruptly and gathered some shreds of his former bonhomie.
“I’m sorry. This has been a trying time….” The sec guard leaned and whispered in his ear. “Ah, of course. Thank you, Ellison, for the reminder.”
To Ryan and the others he said, “First things firstly. We believe that you might well have knowledge of something that has gone missing. Something that belongs to us. Well?”
Chapter Sixteen
“Missing?” Ryan repeated. His senses were honed so fine that he was totally aware that every one of the nine friends around the blaze was waiting for one tiny clue from him, a signal to draw their guns and start a firefight.
“Indeed. Something has recently disappeared. Something that had been proving rather useful to us. I don’t suppose that you would have any knowledge at all of this ‘something’ of ours, would you, sailor man?”
“I think I need a bit more of a description,” Ryan replied, his mind flooded by a sudden vision of the raggled and tortured nameless chill that was currently being destroyed, only a couple of yards from where he was sitting.
“Yes,” Buford drawled thoughtfully. “Perhaps you could tell me if anything unusual had crossed your path, so to speak, since your arrival here on our land.”
“Couple hundred dwarf shrews, all drinking together.” Ryan rested his chin in his left hand, pondering the question. “Little ferret. Real double-big moose.”
“I don’t yet know anything about you, not even your name. But I would not be pleased if I considered you were being willfully stupid and obtuse. I have only to say a single word, and there would be many deaths here.”
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