Ryan handed over the eighteen-inch steel panga. “Can you hone that for me while you’re at it, Jak?”
“Sure.” Sparks flew as he pedaled furiously, making the large wheel hum.
“Doc, they even got some lead for your cannon,” J.B. called. “Fill up your pockets while you can. Don’t see many of those 18-gauge grapeshot rounds. And there’s plenty of rounds for the revolver chamber.” He pushed back the brim of his fedora and looked around the stone-walled room with its rows of chained rifles and scatterguns and the neatly labeled boxes of ammo of every caliber known to man. “This stuff’s worth a baron’s ransom,” he said. “A serious fortune.”
“Haven’t got any flechettes for the Smith amp; Wesson M-4000, have they?” Ryan asked.
J.B.’s unusual pistol-grip shotgun held eight rounds of Remington flechettes, each round packed with twenty of the tiny, razored, inch-long darts.
“Yeah. Up here in this cabinet. Got plenty of those equaloy rounds and some caseless that would have done for your old Heckler amp; Koch, Ryan.”
Ryan himself was scavenging for the 7.62 mm rounds he needed for the Steyr SSG-70 hunting rifle. To his delight he even found a brand-new baffle silencer, still in its factory-greased packing, that fitted the SIG-Sauer P-26 automatic. The original one had given up the ghost many months earlier. There were also three olive-green cases of 9 mm ammunition that fitted J.B.’s Uzi, as well as the SIG-Sauer.
“There are .38s over here, Mildred,” Krysty called, stocking up for her double-action Smith amp; Wesson 640. Mildred’s supremely accurate Czech target revolver also fired the Smith amp; Wesson .38 round.
Jak needed some .357s for his Colt Python, though he tended to use the blaster as little as possible, relying on his other weapons and his own skills.
“Those grens, John?” Mildred asked, looking into a row of open boxes.
“Yeah. Any you want? Always come in handy when you least expect it.”
“Which are the ones that start fires?”
“Burners? Those. Next to the blue-and-scarlet implodes. What are you planning to burn, Millie?”
She smiled. “You never know what’s going to come along just begging for someone to set it on fire.”
The guard had been wandering around, occasionally checking out of one of the sec-steel barred windows, whistling an old predark song that Ryan recognized as “So Long, It’s Been Good To Know You.”
“Woody Guthrie,” Doc said. “During the bleak time that I was held a hapless prisoner by the fiendish whitecoat scientists, before they fired me forward into Deathlands, I became very fond of folk music. Woody was one of my special favorites with his dust-bowl ballads.”
“You got what you want?” the guard asked.
Ryan nodded. “Think so. You finished with that wheel, Jak? Yeah, then we’re ready to go.”
“What you goin’ to do next, for the rest of the day? Check out the ville?” the guard asked, leaning against the frame of the sec door.
Ryan hadn’t thought about it. “You got any ideas? Any good walks around in the grounds?”
The guard nodded vigorously. “Why, heck, do we? Countess is real keen on making things beautiful. Most important to her, apart from” He looked around nervously. “Apart from you-know-what about having a son and all.”
“Which way should we go?” Krysty asked.
“Out the rear entrance, past the stables and down over the terraces. Around the pin mill that stands at the end of the long fish pond. Follow a winding path across the flank of the steep valley, and that brings you to the viewing spot at the top of the gorge. Sight worth seeing.”
“Thanks.” Ryan looked around the armory again, thinking that the countess couldn’t have seriously malign intentions toward them if she was allowing them this much freedom. There hadn’t been even a hint that they might leave their blasters somewhere safe and collect them when they left.
“Have a nice day,” the guard said.
THEY FOLLOWED his instructions, heading out into the sweet-scented gardens, where many of the plants had small metal labels attached to their stems to identify them. Near the house was a terrace of roses in all colors, sizes and shapes.
“This lemony one’s beautiful,” Krysty said, kneeling to catch the scent.