There was no point in waiting for the fingers to reach the knife.
The panga bit into the exposed neck with a wet thud, like a butcher’s blade striking the flanks of a carcass. Blood gushed from the severed artery below the right ear, fountaining into the wet grass, black in the moonlight.
The man fell flat on his back. His legs kicked for a few moments, both hands opening and closing in twitching convulsions as the neuron lines went down.
Ryan bent and wiped the smeared blade on the man’s baggy pants, straightening. He looked around the shadowed garden, feeling the rain becoming more heavy on his face.
There was no sign of any other living creature in the neighborhood.
He walked quietly back into the house.
The creaking of the hinges of the door had awakened Jak, who’d sat up, blaster in hand, as Ryan slowly climbed the stairs toward him.
“Trouble?” he asked.
“How did you know, Jak?”
“Smell on you. Hear fast heart.”
“Yeah. Found one of those men in dresses we trailed in the redoubt.”
“One?” The teenager was up on his feet, peering down into the moonlit vault of the hall below.
“Only one. Oriental with a sword. Kind of odd.” He changed his mind. “Hold that. He was triple odd.”
“Dead?”
“Dead.”
EVERYONE WAS ROUSED.
J.B. suggested a recce to try to find the mysterious second man.
“Bushes and trees trickier than fleas on a dog,” Ryan said. “Steady rain. Chem storm in the area. Light varies between poor and nonexistent.”
“He didn’t have a blaster?”
“No. Beautiful sword, and all this armor. Never seen anything like it in my life. Not here in Deathlands.”
Doc cleared his throat. “From your detailed description, my dear fellow, I am forced to only one possible conclusion as to the nature of our visitors.”
“Samurai,” Mildred stated.
“I was about to say that,” the old man said crossly. “The samurai. A class of professional warriors who flourished in old Japan for several hundred years. But they had died out, effectively, about fifteen or twenty years before my birth.”
“You mean they gave up when they knew you were on your way, Doc?” Mildred teased.
“No. Not so. It was when Commodore Matthew Perry arrived with his so-called black ships in the territorial waters of Japan in, I think, about ’53. He brought all the benefits of Western civilization that killed off these fighting men of honor. But it puzzles me to think what such a man could be doing here in Deathlands.”
“And he spoke good English, lover?” Krysty asked. “Couldn’t be some kind of time traveler? Operation Chronos from the farthest East?”
Ryan shook his head. “Don’t know. How come they’re using the gateways? And folks have been talking about gangs of them appearing, like wolf’s-head bandits.”
“Be interested to see him and all his weapons at first light.” J.B. looked around. “Best keep a good watch for the rest of the night.”
“Yeah.” Ryan quickly allocated parts of the house around the group. One of them down in the hall, just to watch the front and back doors, another guard roaming around the silent first floor and a third sentry to cover the top floor and attics of the rambling old house.
HE WAS ASLEEP when Dean came in to wake him with the news that the first opalescent light of dawn was lighting up the Washington suburb.
“Nobody around?”
“No. But.”
“What?”
“No body.”
Ryan sat up, glowering at his son. “You got something to tell me, then get on with it. We’re not playing some stupe kid’s game, Dean.”
“Sorry, Dad. But there isn’t any body out there in the garden.”
Ryan still wasn’t completely awake from the excitement of the previous night. “Nobody?” He sighed and felt a pulse of anger throbbing at his temple.
Dean bit his lip. “Not anybody, Dad. Not any body.”
“The corpse is gone.”
“Right.”
“Animals? Heard a pack of hunting dogs when I got up. Some way off.”
“No sign of any blood or anything. Me and Jak went to take a look a couple minutes ago.”
“Footmarks?”
Dean sniffed, looking down at the dew that coated his boots. “Jak says it was the other little man. Deep marks where he must’ve picked up the body of his friend and carried him off into the undergrowth. Couldn’t follow him.”