James Axler – Freedom Lost

From behind Adrian, his captor spoke softly, in a near whisper “No questions. I’m talking now. You were over at the old hospital, my friend. Round in the same area where six of my men disappeared a few days back. Now, I’m sure you’ll agree that stickies are not the most brilliant of the many noble creatures roaming Deathlands, and perhaps they got lost or ran off or even found a room and ended up locking themselves in. I don’t know. All I have is the evidence in front of me, and that’s you.”

Norm reached down and cupped Adrian’s chin with a hand covered in scars. His fingernails were long and sharp, jagged and uneven. He moved his hand up and ripped the gag out of his prisoner’s mouth.

Adrian inhaled deeply, the smell of rotting flesh flowing into his lungs as he breathed. He gagged, but kept his composure as best he could.

“One of my friends says you have information to barter for your own miserable life,” Norm said.

“Y-yeah.”

“What is that information?”

The scavenger paused, wondering if he could talk his way through being chilled on the spot. “I know what happened to those six stickies.”

Norm’s one bulging eye seemed to grow larger in the broken socket of his face. “Do you, now?”

“They’re chilled. All of them.”

“How?”

“They were chilled by a man named Ryan Cawdor.”

The utterance of the name had a most curious and unexpected effect on the scarred man standing before the helpless Alton Adrian. The mention of Cawdor caused Norm to twist his once burned fingers into a bony fist and strike out, catching Adrian full in the mouth. The skin on his knuckles peeled back from the gap where the scavenger’s front teeth were missing, making Norm bleed freely. The force from the surprise blow caused the chair to tip over on one side.

“You stinkin’ liar!” Norm cried, kicking Adrian in the ribs. “No fucking way is One-eye here! No fucking way!”

All of the control, all of the posing, all of the attempts to pass himself off as something more than man or mutie had been erased the moment Ryan’s name came into the picture. Norm was gone, and in his place was Johnson Lester, the cowardly sec man who’d encountered Ryan twice before.

Lester, who blamed Ryan for the downfall of Willie ville, and for his own miserable luck in being forced to work the wheel, and being caught when the ville was blown apart.

Lester, who’d been saved by a stickie and traveled to Winston in hopes to staking his own claim to power.

Lester, who was now undeniably insane.

“Sure,” Adrian replied, speaking through his split upper lip. “Sure, he’s here. Ryan Cawdor, or One-eye, with the eye patch, and J. B. Dix, and the albino, and the old fart they call Doc, and the woman with red hair”

“Mutie!” Lester screamed, cutting Adrian off. “She’s a mutie bitch whore!”

“All of them killed those stickies,” the scavie said. “Now they’re in Freedom. Working sec. Mall’s been getting ripped by stickie attacks. Got them to help. Heard about that right before leaving Freedom yesterday.”

Adrian was talking faster now, hoping he’d be freed. He spoke of frozen heads and hidden loot, but quickly went back to Ryan when his captor demanded to know more. He’d switched the man’s attention to another object of hate. He’d given him information. Perhaps he’d managed to talk his way clear, and if so, he was getting the hell out of North Carolina as fast as he could run, and going all the way back to Georgia, and to his family, and his home.

And when Adrian finally fell silent, his throat raw and aching, Lester had crawled back into whatever mental cubby hole the scarred man kept his former persona tucked away in and the much cooler Norm had come back out and was driving the wag.

“You were correct, Mr. Adrian,” Norm said, cool, calm, collected. “Your information has proved most valuable.”

Alton dared another question. “Can I have my clothes?”

“Why? Of what use are they to you now?” Adrian’s stomach turned to ice, as cold and hard as any of the men frozen solid in the cryo laboratory he’d seen before.