Sitting against the aft doors, Jak Lauren merely grunted in reply as he continued to strop a knife on a whetstone with steady strokes. The pale teenager was dressed in camou-colored military fatigues and a battered vest decorated with feathers and bits of mirror and metal sewn into the seams and collar. But that was a trick; razor blades were sewn inside the collar and any enemy grabbing him soon discovered that the hard way when they lost fingers. The youth was a true albino. His skin was dead white, and ruby-red eyes peered from a cascade of snowy hair. A massive Colt Python .357 jutted from his belt, and at least a dozen leaf-bladed throwing knives were hidden on his person.
“Fools die,” Jak stated coldly, tucking away the leaf-bladed throwing knife and, like magic, another appeared in his hand. “What else new?”
“I saw wags on the side of the road,” Dean Cawdor said, a Browning Hi-Power blaster held casually as he watched the horizon for any signs of pursuit. “Think they might try and come after us?”
“Those wrecks? Even if the wags worked, they’ll be busy squabbling over who’s in charge now that we killed their leader,” J.B. stated, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses to a more comfortable position.
“Good,” Dean said, clicking the safety on his blaster with a flick of his thumb. The boy tucked the blaster into his belt. Although only eleven years old, going on twelve, Dean already carried himself with the deadly assurance of a seasoned warrior and seemed to look more like his father with every passing day.
“I just thank Gaia they thought a wooden beam would stop us,” Krysty Wroth said gruffly. “Could have been a lot worse.”
The shapely redhead squatted comfortably on the steps leading to the overhead turret, checking the loads in her Smith & Wesson .38. Krysty had lost the blaster in that hellish garage at Front Royal when she’d gotten caught by Overton’s sec men. But J.B. had found the blaster under a bench when he’d done some work on the LAV, the weapon discarded there, apparently, by one of the blue shirts. The neat .38 handled better than the powerful .357, and she was happy to have it once again in hand.
Krysty was a beautiful woman, her complexion flawless, her abundance of fiery hair gently moving as if stirred by secret winds only she could feel.
“Those coldhearts could have smashed a hornet’s nest against the side of the LAV,” she continued. “And then we would have been in real trouble.”
“Hornets?” Jak asked, pausing in his work.
A tall man with silver-gray hair was resting against the ammo locker and raised his head at the conversation, arching an eyebrow. “Indeed, madam, I do understand,” Doc Tanner rumbled in a deep stentorian bass. “Once the nest hit us, the hornets would target our wag as an enemy and come swarming in through every blaster port and vent. Their painful stings would soon drive us outside where the others could easily slay us in the confusion.”
Wearing a frilly shirt and an outlandish frock coat, the old man would have been a strange sight even in his own time period, and his resplendent crop of hair made Doc appear much older than he really was. A slim ebony swordstick was laid casually across his lap, and a massive double-barreled blaster jutted from the cavalry gun belt around his waist. The Civil War museum piece seeming incongruous with the rest of his dapper attire.
Krysty gestured with an open palm. “Old trick,” she said. “My mother used it often against the big muties.”
The old man pulled a few inches of shiny steel blade from within the ebony stick, then slammed the sword back into its sheath. “Deuced clever, I must admit.”
Ryan glanced over his shoulder at Krysty. “Hornets,” he said after a while. “Glad you’re on our side, lover. That would work even better on folks in an open cart, or on horseback.”
“Pretty good,” Jak agreed, tucking away his whetstone.
Biting off a piece of beef jerky, Dr. Mildred Wyeth chewed and swallowed the mouthful before speaking. A stocky black woman with bright, intelligent eyes, her lightweight denim jacket was unbuttoned, showing a heavy flannel shirt and a gun belt supporting a sleek target pistol, the ammo loops on the side of the belt filled with oily brass cartridges. A rare predark field-surgery kit holding medical supplies lay protectively between her boots, the canvas lovingly patched here and there.
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