James Axler – Deathlands

“Yeah. Handblaster was also Portuguese. It’s a Savage M-915. Antique. Got some interesting details from what I remember about them.”

“What?” Jak asked.

“Shouldn’t we be moving out of here?” Mildred asked. “Sorry to interrupt all this male-bonding talk about guns, but those three might come back with a bunch of friends.”

Ryan nodded. “In a minute, Mildred. They can’t get back with help just yet.”

He turned to J.B. “Go on.” It was always profoundly interesting tapping the Armorer’s unparalleled knowledge of weaponry.

“Delayed blow-back action. Bit like the Model 12 Steyr. Way it’s built, the actual barrel rotates. Slows the action down just a little. But it all starts to operate the moment you initiate the firing sequence. Spur cocking lever. Set where you’d find the hammer. A spring-loaded striker on the old Savage gets itself released by the sear.”

Ryan was fascinated by this arcane piece of blaster lore. “So the cocking lever doesn’t hit on the firing pin, like the hammer does on most handblasters?”

“Right. So you’re careful not to have a round in the chamber when you let the cocking lever down.”

“Real old blasters,” Jak said.

“Yeah,” the Armorer agreed. “Real old.”

“How come natives with bows and arrows also have blasters like that?” Krysty asked.

“Find it a lot all the way across Deathlands. Dirt-poor squatters, in a stinking frontier pesthole so low the pigs eat better than people, can end up with a top-quality Python or Magnum.” J.B. shook his head. “Those blasters could be well over the hundred-year mark.”

Mildred was looking around her. “I’ve never been down this far south,” she said. “Spent a little time in Mexico. College days. Checking out some Toltec and Olmec ruins. All part of the great Aztec empire.”

“I read about the Aztecs,” Doc said. “Fascinating, the strengths and weaknesses of their way of life. Staggering beauty and appalling violence. I read an excellent book on them once. So long ago. Also covered something of the Mayas and the Incas, farther south.”

“They tribes, Doc?” Dean asked.

“Civilizations, son. The Lakota and the Chiricahua could be called tribes, I guess. But when you start thinking about the old ones, like the Anasazi, men you are talking about an entire civilization.”

“What’s the antelope for?” Dean asked, walking forward. “And what’s this triple-weird stone for?”

Mildred glanced at Doc before answering. “My best guess is that the animal is a sacrifice and the stone is likely some kind of altar.”

Doc nodded, joining the boy. “Flattened top and a channel to carry the blood over one side. Maybe to be caught in a vessel of some kind. And there’s a crude sculpture of a man with a snake issuing from his mouth. Serpent god. For once Dr. Wyeth and I find ourselves on the same side of the fence.”

“Altar?” Ryan repeated. “They come all the way out here to leave a sacrifice to their gods? The gods of the jungle?” A thought struck him. “Wait a minute. That hacked-out trail runs from here all the way to the gateway entrance. Almost like they’re sacrificing to that.”

THEY MOVED CAUTIOUSLY along the fifteen-foot-wide track, heading roughly westward, though it curved and twisted in on itself like a poisoned rattler.

The jungle pressed in closely on both sides, with impenetrable walls of brush, some of the shrubs with murderous spines six inches long. And everywhere was the overpowering scent of flowers and the humming of insects.

Krysty was at Ryan’s heels. “Be a great ace-on-the-line sort of place for an ambush, lover,” she said quietly.

“You feel anything?”

“No. Sort of seething life, but all of it seems to be away in the background. No immediate threat.”

“Could be a hundred armed men within fifty feet of us, and we wouldn’t know.” Ryan looked behind, checking that everyone was keeping a proper spacing.

“Thought Trader didn’t approve of taking chances like this. What would he think?”

Ryan smiled. “He’d have thought there was no choice. Then chances don’t come into it.”

“Where’s that crystal pool you were talking about?” Mildred called from farther behind. “We’re all dehydrating at the rate of a pint an hour. Maybe more. We go on too far, Ryan, and we’ll all get ill. And after that we’ll all get dead.”