Silent killing meant Jak and his leaf-bladed throwing knives.
The teenager waited until the stickies had passed him, then rose from his hiding place and let fly with one of his concealed blades. It whined through the air like a loosed arrow, striking the second of the stickies through the side of the throat, just below and behind the right ear. It severed the artery, sending him toppling off his donkey, hands grabbing at the sharp pain of the wound, unaware that he was already dying.
Blood fountained high in the air, pattering in the mud as the mutie crashed to the ground.
His comrade was starting to turn, a sickly grin strung across his face as he thought his comrade had simply fallen from the back of the burro.
“Wrong move and you get to be dead,” Ryan said, appearing in front of him, holding the rifle at his hip. J.B. came into sight on the other side of the trail, the Smith amp; Wesson scattergun covering the stickie.
Krysty, Mildred and Doc also showed themselves, as did Carl Lanning, a few moments later. He was gripping a short-handled sledgehammer that he normally carried tucked in his broad belt.
The mortally wounded mutie was kicking and scrabbling in the dirt at the side of the trail, the flow of blood already eased to little more than a trickle.
“Why you chill Jimbob?” the other stickie asked, looking puzzled. “You gonna get chilled when word gets to rest of us.” He spit in the dirt near J.B.’s boots. “Triple stupes all soon chilled like Jimbob.”
“Get off the burro,” Ryan ordered. “Want to ask you some questions.”
For a moment it looked as if the stickie was going to ignore the command, sitting negligently on the back of the burro, hands holding the dangling reins. Finally, slowly, he dismounted.
“Sit down there,” Ryan said, pointing with the rifle to a shelf of rock set among the bracken and heather. “Look after the animals, Jak.”
“You chill me?”
“Mebbe. Depends on you telling us what we want to know about the rest of your friends.”
“Friends?” The brutish face showed bewilderment. “I ain’t have no fuck friends.”
The rest of them gathered around the prisoner, Carl standing just behind him.
“The rest of the gang. Where they’re living. Where you keep the gas wag. Weapons. That kind of stuff.”
The stickie’s hands were knotting and fumbling at each other, the tiny suckered circles in the palms and along the strong fingers opening and closing like nervous mouths.
“I don’t tell you that.”
Without warning, Carl hefted the hammer and struck the mutie a single cracking blow across the back of the skull. There was the unmistakable, unforgettable sound, like a large apple being crushed underfoot. The stickie slumped forward, rolling onto the trail, the looseness of his hands and feet the sure sign of his death. A thread of crimson blood oozed from his right ear, from his nose and mouth, and leaked from the corners of his watery eyes. One hand tapped on the cold, mud-slick pebbles for a few seconds, then became still.
Ryan turned the Steyr toward Carl, filled with one of his sudden murderous rages, his finger tight on the trigger of the rifle.
“You! I said not to hurt him.”
“We was goin’ to chill him anyways. Bastard had it coming, didn’t he?”
“Sure he did and sure we would,” J.B. said, sensing Ryan’s rage, stepping in close. “But we all knew he wasn’t to be harmed until we’d questioned him. Now” He gestured at the corpse with the scattergun.
“You dumb bastard,” Ryan snarled. “I should gut shoot you and leave you like a dog in the dirt. One more stupe move like that and I swear”
Carl had backed away, his drinker’s eyes swimming with fear, hands in front of his chest. “I just thought”
“Thinking was what you didn’t do!”
“You haven’t seen what those bastard chillers been doing around these parts,” he said, stammering with fright.
“I’ve seen the dead and I’ve seen the dying and I’m going to make sure that the cold hearts don’t get away to do it again. I mean it, Carl” His temper eased a little. “One more step out of line, and you either leave us or you end up dead as a beaver hat. Understand?”