Jak dropped to his knees beside him, pulling at the old man’s arm and exposing the bite wound. It was swollen and red, with a buildup of venom in the lump that surrounded the two fang marks. Although the venom had been swift acting, the fact that there was such a large lump surrounding it suggested that there was more still contained within. It was imperative for Jak to remove it. Slipping one of the knives back into its hiding place, Jak kept hold of Doc’s arm and transferred the remaining knife to his free hand, immediately slitting the red lump, which spilled out a pressurized mixture of blood and venom. Doc tried to scream in pain, but his vocal cords were paralyzed enough for him to produce little more than an agonized squeal.
Jak bent his head and applied his lips to the open wound, sucking out the poison that remained in Doc’s wrist, then spitting it out onto the dust—once dry, but now moistened by the blood of the chilled cats.
Dean was by Jak’s side immediately with a canteen of water. The albino swilled the remainder of the blood and venom from his mouth and spit it out onto the earth.
“What do you think?” Dean asked.
Jak shrugged. “Doc live, but mebbe have to carry while. Take time poison sweat out—give him water.”
Dean bent and forced some water into Doc, even though the old man’s paralyzed throat found it hard to accept the liquid.
“Fuck, I thought this was going to be a rest stop,”Mik said with a sardonic manner that verged on tired hysteria.
“Rest up for a while, then we should get going,” Lonnie said softly, running his hands over his closely cropped head. “We can’t lose time now, especially if we need to carry Doc.”
While they took a rest break, keeping away from the scene of the carnage, Dean and Jak constructed a makeshift stretcher from parts of the lightweight tents. Tilly and Danny agreed to take the first leg carrying Doc. The only good news during the rest period was that Doc already seemed to be regaining some use of his muscles, as his legs were already beginning to twitch involuntarily.
Finally, they were ready to begin again. Tilly and Danny lifted the stretcher, and Lonnie took the lead.
The sun overhead was past the halfway mark of the day, and they still had a lot of ground to cover. The plan was to be on the edge of Charity by nightfall, using the cover of darkness to bypass the irregular patrols of Baron Al, and to camp overnight before staring their recce mission properly when the dawn broke, by which time they could only hope that Doc would be back to full mobility.
Chapter Nine
Dawn broke with a rapidity that caught them all by surprise. Jak was on watch, and roused the rest of the recce party, including Doc.
“I feel a little stiff in the muscles, but otherwise ready to take on anything,” he reassured them, although the deathly pallor of his skin told another story.
“Well, you do know that we can’t carry passengers when we’re in there,” Lonnie told him, but with a sidelong glance at Jak and Dean just to let them know that he was sure they would be loyal to Doc, but his people couldn’t afford to be if they found themselves up against it.
“Okay,” he continued after they had agreed. “We need to scout the whole ville, see if there’s any big sign of sec activity, find the base where the convoy will set off from, and assess the amount of wags and armory being used.”
“You know where we’re headed?” Dean asked.
Lonnie nodded curtly. “Know this place all too well. And I know a way in.”
Charity was built around the remains of an old New Mexico town, the name of which had long since been forgotten. But it had been a one-horse town, and possibly a one-wag town, in the days when such things counted. Not being big, it had been isolated and off the beaten track for any enemy attacks during the nukecaust. As such, it had only been the nuclear winter that swept the Deathlands that had damaged the old buildings, and this was in places minimal, as the town had been built to withstand the harsh heat and desert winds, with low adobe buildings, and very little over two stories. When the ancestors of the current baron and the interbred families that made up the ville’s elite had first come to the old town, they had taken over the most repairable and least damaged buildings, which were those that were residential, and thus smaller than the more damaged shops and small businesses that were either directly on the main street, or clustered on the edge.