“Sure you have. All we got is a 7.62 mm Steyr rifle, an Uzi machine pistol, a SIG-Sauer 9 automatic, a Smith amp; Wesson M-4000 scattergun and about five other big handblasters. Not much.”
Once again there came the eerie delay in a reply, but just one voice this time.
“We won’t play unless we got the biggest and bestest. Won’t fuckin’ play.”
“Not a game,” Ryan said, keeping his voice as calm and gentle as he could.
“Not?”
Doc interrupted. “My dear friends, I hate to betray any sense of urgency, but I worry that the meat could be cooking a little too well.”
There was a taint of scorching overlaying the delicious odor of cooking.
“Buffalo’s burning,” Jak said tersely.
“How many of you?”
“Seven.”
“Any women?” The dual voices overlapped so closely that they nearly sounded like one man speaking. “Haven’t seen women in here for” There was a long pause, then the voices split for the first time, riding over each other but not synchronized like the previous times.
“Fuckin’ years.”
“Can’t remember how long.”
“We have two women. And they’ve both got good blasters.” Ryan was beginning to lose patience, and considered making a fast flanking move to come in through the smoke behind the speakers and wipe them out.
“Truly?” both men said.
“Just walk out and look. Or we’ll come in through the smoke and show you.”
“No. Guards of Redoubt in charge. Yes, we are. We’ll fuckin’ come out and see you now. Yes, we will.”
Two figures, dimly seen, walked together, stepping slowly left and right and left, very close together.
The smoke pulled back like a theater curtain, revealing the Guards of the Redoubt to Ryan and the others.
They were identical twins, looking to be anywhere between the mid-teens up to the late thirties, with boyish features. They both wore green-and-brown camouflage shirts, with sleeves rolled well up, and pants, with highly polished combat boots.
They both had handblasters holstered at the waist, Smith amp; Wesson Model 29S, with the rare five-inch barrels, chambered for .44 Magnum rounds. But neither of the young men had made any effort to draw his blaster.
They were pale and soft faced, with straw-colored hair trimmed short. Their eyebrows were so faint they almost disappeared over bright blue eyes. Both of them wore identical Zapata mustaches, and both stood six feet tall.
Mildred was next to Ryan and she whispered to him. “Symptoms of bad rad sickness.”
The moment she mentioned it, Ryan saw the signs for himself. They were common enough in Deathlands, particularly in some of the more notorious rad hot spots purplish patches across the arms, particularly on the inside of the forearms; tight lines to the face and a general tautness as though they’d been dieting too hard; sores around the corners of the mouth; and threads of blood rimming the fingernailsthose that remained.
“Outlanders, I’m Titus of the Redoubt Guard. This is my brother Mervyn of the Redoubt Guard.”
“Yes, we are,” said the brother on the left.
There was something about them that caught Ryan’s attention, something above and beyond their obvious physical condition, something mental.
Their eyes were bright, but they didn’t seem to reveal any intelligence behind them. And there was a deliberate slowness about the way they moved in sluggish unison.
“I’m Ryan Cawdor. These are my good friends, Krysty Wroth, J. B. Dix, Mildred Wyeth, Doc Tanner, Jak Lauren and my son, Dean. We’re outlanders and seem to have gotten ourselves lost. Where are we?”
“How you fuckin’ get in here?”
Ryan sensed that this was a potentially tricky one. He threw it back at the young man. “Well, Titus By the way, what’s your other name?”
“Other?” It was as though he’d been asked to solve the riddle of the sphinx.
“Do you have another name, after Titus?”
The blank face cleared a little. “Titus of Redoubt Guard. That what you mean, outlander?”
“No. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s what I meant. How do you think we got in here?”
“That’s a good one, Mervyn.”
“Yeah, Titus, that’s a good one.”
“Seems we don’t know the answer to that one, outlander. Tell us. Yeah, tell us.”