James Axler – Bitter Fruit

The boy came forward, carrying a whiskey bottle by its neck, the dark liquid sloshing inside and catching light from the lanterns. He looked enough like the other boy that they could have been brothers.

Reversing his knife, J.B. waited until the boy had passed him, then stepped out of hiding and brought the hilt of the blade crashing into the boy’s temple. He muffled the groan of pain with his free hand, at the same time catching the boy’s sudden slack weight.

J.B. dragged the second stable hand over by the first. He returned to the saddles and other gear. In minutes he had six horses saddled, tied together and ready for travel. Getting down the alley on one horse while leading five others was going to be no easy thing, but it was worth the risk, since riding out of the ville was a better option than escape on foot. Stealing one of the wags had been an alternative, but Gehrig kept guards posted on them. One of them went missing, the raider captain would know immediately.

A hissing cat that had been plundering the garbage bins streaked away as J.B. led the horses through the alley.

Then he saw the two shadows moving on the other side of the Bent Rose. He caught only a brief glimpse in the moonlight, but he was sure the man he’d spotted was one of the military people that had followed them into the mat-trans unit in White Sands.

Muttering a curse, the Armorer stopped the horses and pulled himself into the saddle, the leather creaking as it took his weight. Taking up the lantern he’d brought, he struck a self-light and lit the wick.

When he had the flame burning well on its own, he keyed it up, then wrapped the red homespun napkin he’d stolen from the Bent Rose around the glass. The light turned red. He held it up, looking toward the window where Ryan was.

A self-light flared inside the room, briefly tracking illumination over the one-eyed man’s face. He shook it out.

J.B. waited, hoping. Two self-lights meant that Doc and Jak had returned. There was no other light. And there was no time, because the Armorer knew Burroughs’s team was closing in on Ryan.

With a quick heave J.B. sent the red-wrapped lantern smashing into the wooden side of a dentist’s office. The oil splashed over the dry timber, catching fire with a whoosh.

Ryan would know they were up against it now, and the fire might buy them a little time.

J.B. kicked his heels into his horse. The animal bolted forward immediately, ready to get away from the spreading fire already twisting up into the upper rafters of the dentist’s shop.

Behind him J.B. could hear the first strident yells of consternation. By then he was riding hell for leather, guiding the horses into the alley behind the Bent Rose.

Chapter Twenty

“No one will be spared, of course.”

Mildred sat across the table from Prince Boldt, listening to the man casually talk about murdering a world. Or, at least, murdering what was left of it. “You’re insane.” And that was her professional opinion, as well as her personal one.

Instead of being angry about the pronouncement, the Prince seemed amused. “You would,” he said, “naturally see it that way at first glance.”

“First, second and as damn many as you want to give me,” Mildred said.

“Really?” Boldt eyed her.

“Yeah.”

Boldt leaned forward. “How many people have you met since your return to this world that you would want as your neighbors?”

“I had neighbors I didn’t like back before I got frozen.”

“Haven’t you ever wished you could block out a certain segment of society, start it over in another image so it wouldn’t be as wasteful or destructive, whether toward others or itself?”

Mildred weighed the question in her mind, wondering how much she’d told him while under the effects of the mushroom narcotics. The men who’d killed her father, the people who believed as they did, who painted the world in colors and decided which ones were good and which ones were bad, those she’d be tempted to change or eradicate.