Besides, hidden on his person, Jak had several leaf-bladed throwing knifes, their hilts taped for perfect balance. The young albino didn’t need to worry about using a blaster when he had access to his knives, and he never went anywhere without one or more within instant access.
As usual before a mat-trans jump, Jak had nothing much to say, unlike the thin man beside him, who kept up an ongoing discussion with anyone who would listen or, when that option was out, keep a dialogue going with himself.
Next to Jak’s eerie whiteness was the weathered face of Doc Tanner, a man trawled from the 1800s and thrust into present-day Deathlands. A lifetime of sights was etched into his skinand his eyes. Doc gripped his ebony walking stick tight, the silver lion’s-head handle keeping the secret of the hidden and honed blade of Toledo steel housed inside the body of the cane.
A most unusual handblaster was holstered at the man’s thin hip. It was an ornate Le Mat, a weapon dating back to the early days of the Civil War. The weapon was almost as much an antique as Doc himself, but probably in much better condition. Engraved and decorated with twenty-four-carat gold as a commemorative tribute to the great Confederate soldier James Ewell Brown Stuartor Jeb Stuart, as his friends and folks in Virginia referred to himthe massive hand cannon weighed in at over three and half pounds.
The blaster had two barrels and an adjustable hammer, firing a single .63-caliber round like a shotgun, and nine .36-caliber rounds in revolver mode. Finding ammo was difficult, but the old man refused to give up the sometimes clumsy blaster for a more modern weapon.
“Once you are set in your ways, there is no reason to change unless absolutely, positively necessary,” Doc intoned.
Ryan did a quick inventory of his own personal arsenal. The 9 mm SIG-Sauer P-226 blaster was at his side like a loyal dog, the weapon’s bulky baffle silencer digging reassuringly into his hip. The twenty-five-and-one-half-ounce weapon served as his third hand.
He had looped his bolt-action walnut-stocked Steyr SSG-70 rifle over one shoulder. Also on hand were two bladed weapons, a large eighteen-inch panga strapped to his left hip and a flensing knife, hidden away at the small of his back. Various bits of ammunition and a talent for the lost art of hand-to-hand combat made for a dangerous two-legged killing machine.
“Dad don’t take shit off nobody,” Dean had once said in awed wonder to Krysty as they both watched Ryan take out twin attackers in less than thirty seconds.
“I know. He doesn’t have to. And what have I told you about watching your language?” the redhead replied.
This same incident had caused a third foe to cry out in exasperation at the firepower Ryan was using and the skill in how it was deployed, “It’s a wonder the one-eyed son of a bitch doesn’t clank when he walks!”
“That’s mister one-eyed son of a bitch to you, stupe,” Ryan spat back, before unleashing a single shot from the SIG-Sauer pistol and turning the upper part of the attacker’s head into a messy mix of brain, blood and bone.
The memory comforted Dean. More often than not, he viewed his father as more than human. Oh, not in the way one might view a mutie or doomie, but instead in how a man might step back and look at a force of nature. Ryan shared one trait with the unpredictable weather patterns that circled the globeonce you unleashed the whirlwind, there was no stopping him until the course was completed.
The mist of the chamber began to creep into everyone’s being, tendrils of pale smoke sparking with miniature bursts of lightning, working its magic as the group prepared to be taken to an unknown site at an undisclosed location. No one could know for sure where they might end up. The band of travelers had traversed most of what remained of the United States and even visited other continents during their time of hopping around via the gateways.
How the mat-trans units really worked was anybody’s guess. Mildred’s theorybased on the quick study of the precious little documentation she’d been able to scan, the discussions she’d had with the rare few in the Deathlands who appeared to know something about the devices and late-night talks with Doc in the man’s more lucid stageswas that both organic and inorganic matter were reduced to digital information and instantaneously transmitted on a form of carrier wave to another gateway, where it was then reconstructed, molecule by molecule.
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