The thick canopy of branches overhead blocked any possible view of the stars. Then a cough made Ryan go motionless. There was a brief flare of spitting light, and a man’s face was illuminated as he lit a cig. He shook the flame out, briefly showing the Remington shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm.
Drawing his panga with his free hand, Ryan circled around the guard. Contentedly, the man puffed away before finally dropping the butt and grinding it under his heel. As he stood straight, a cold sliver of metal rested on his throat and gouged his flesh.
“Not a word,” Ryan said, easing the shotgun out of the man’s grip and tossing it aside. “Any more guards around?”
“No.”
“Good, then you get to live for a while.” Ryan walked in front of the man and pressed the barrel of the SIG-Sauer against his temple. “Where’s Overton?”
The sec man stood in the darkness breathing heavily, estimating his chances for a break, so reluctantly Ryan rapped him across the face with the blaster. Gasping in pain, the man dropped to his knees, blood flowing between his fingers.
“You bastard,” he choked.
“Overton,” Ryan demanded once more.
“Fuck you, traitor,” growled the blue shirt, glaring hatefully upward.
The word caught Ryan by surprise. “Traitor?”
“We were going to repair America, make her great again by chilling the muties and cleansing the rad pits,” the man said, painfully standing. “But you stopped him. A man whose boots you aren’t worthy to lick.”
“Clean the nuke blaster craters? You’re crazy,” Ryan said, leveling his blaster. “Overton is just a man, like you and me, nobody special. Nobody can repair the world, make it like it was again.”
“Screw the world,” the man snarled. “I said America. Let the rest of the half-breeds and Commies die in the rad pits and acid storms. What do we care?”
Ryan nudged the sec man with the blaster. “Right. Overton knows some way to stop the acid rains. And exactly how was this miracle going to happen?”
The blue shirt seemed startled by the question, his face taking on a cunning demeanor. “You don’t know,” he said as if just coming to the realization. “No, I can see that you have no real idea of what was happening at Front Royal.”
“So tell me.”
“Of course,” he said coolly, and breathed deeply.
In sudden realization, Ryan knew the man was going to shout a warning, and no mere blow would stop him. With no other choice, Ryan squeezed the trigger, and the SIG-Sauer coughed softly in the night. The corpse folded to the ground, hardly disturbing the dry leaves.
Ryan started forward, the silenced muzzle of the deadly 9 mm blaster leading the way in the stygian greenery. If the man was going to shout for help, that meant others were close enough to hear him. Moving in a spiral search pattern, Ryan tried to concentrate on the task, but he kept hearing the man’s last words. The blue shirt had truly believed that Overton knew some way to repair all of the damage caused by skydark. Complete crap. Yet the absolute conviction of the man bothered the Deathlands warrior.
You have no real idea of what was happening at Front Royal.
He shook it off. It was just bullshit from a man trying to talk his way out of death. Ryan had seen it before, and done it himself on occasion. Condemned men being walked to the gallows claimed to be the President of the United States, or able to cure the red shakes, and all sorts of crazy things. Kept making wild claims until they dropped the floor out from underneath him. That was all. Just crazy talk. Nothing more.
Starting to part a bush, Ryan felt something odd on his hand and drew it back to see. There was a line of blood across his palm.
Using the blade of the panga to separate the leaves, Ryan found coils of concertina wire strung through the greenery, attached to each tree in a long curving line. It was an imposing barrier to animals and muties. Listening with his whole body, Ryan seemed to hear steps coming this way. Perhaps it was a perimeter guard walking patrol. Good.